


Earth Angel

by Anonymous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Child Abuse, Corporal Punishment, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eventually Harringrove, Explicit Sexual Content, Grooming, M/M, Major Character Death is Not Billy, Neil Hargrove is His Own Warning, Parent/Child Incest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Rape/Non-con, aftermath of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 60,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24204715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Billy is five, digging through boxes in Mommy’s closet in their bedroom, he finds a tape labeled ‘Billy and Daddy.’ He doesn’t have a daddy.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Neil Hargrove
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The author does not condone any of the following.

When Billy is five, digging through boxes in Mommy’s closet in their bedroom, he finds a tape labeled ‘Billy and Daddy.’ He doesn’t have a daddy. Just Mommy and Aunt Cheryl. She’s not really his aunt. Mommy and Aunt Cheryl have been friends their whole likes. Aunt Cheryl shares her home with them. Two bedrooms. A yard that’s fenced in all the way around. Mommy’s bed is along the wall while his is tucked under the window. Not that he sleeps in it most nights. 

When he brings the tape to Mommy out back, she takes the tape with a frown. Mommy and Aunt Cheryl gently fan themselves, sheens of sweat making them glow. He asks what it is, if it’s of him and his daddy. Whoever that is. Mommy is tired all the time. Her and Aunt Cheryl are gone at work all the time. The old lady next door, Mrs Alvarez, encourages Billy to spend time in her house with her grand kids rather than be alone in his house. At least Billy has friends this way, is happy most of the time. But the way Mommy frowns and shares a look with Aunt Cheryl puts a damper on his excitement over the tape.

Mommy doesn’t say anything about it. She rises full of grace and so pretty to step back in the house. Aunt Cheryl calls him to her, says something about lemonade. But Billy peeks between the crack of the back door and the frame, watching Mommy. She cranes up on her toes to tuck the VHS tape on top of the fridge, nudging it all the way back. When she spills outside again, she is all smiles. She sweeps him up and piles him in her lap despite the heat, fans his mop with the junk mail she used on herself only moments ago. Urging his little halo of hair down to her breast, she cradles him like that until he falls asleep to her breathing under him. He doesn’t forget about the tape.

Monday when Mommy and Aunt Cheryl leave for work and Mrs Alvarez calls him over, he lies and begs for time to gather a toy or two to play with. That he can’t find them. What he actually does is scoot a kitchen chair over to the fridge, climb up on the kitchen counter, and then steals the tape. Slipping back to the floor is a piece of cake. The chair is back like Billy had never moved it. He hides the tape under his bed. To watch the next time he is alone. 

That isn’t for another week. Two weeks after the initial discovery of the tape. Normally? Billy would have forgotten it by now. Too enraptured with the older boys next door who teach him how to wrestle and fight fair. They teach him how to stop pulling hair and biting. How to throw a punch and dodge one. Like they’re tough, but they cry when one of their brothers or cousins pushes them down. Whatever. Billy sneaks back through the chain link fences during a moment of chaos. Even the older boys and their swearing and spitting can’t hold his attention when the tape sits waiting. He knows how to push a tape into the black box under the TV in the living room. Knows which button is play or pause or rewind. So he’s glued to the floor right in front of the TV, sweating from the still air, when the sound comes on.

Mommy is in a bed in a room he doesn’t recognize. Someone films her, but she covers her face. Shy. The camera swings over to a window. The ocean is just beyond. The waves come crashing onto the beach so loud, so close. But it doesn’t cover up the man singing. He nestles himself in the corner of an open window, thigh hiked up on the sill, as he cradles a baby to his chest. The person filming stops their chatter and teasing, their, ‘Neil come on, show Billy to the camera,’ so the singing comes through.

“Earth angel, earth angel, will you be mine? My darling dear, love you all the time.”

He croons it so lovingly to the baby quiet in his arms. Chubby hands beat on his chest, scramble for his face when he ducks down. He laughs in the baby’s face and then rocks himself off the sill. He doesn’t continue singing until he reassumes the position, but on the edge of the bed near Mommy. She only drops her hands because he’s there, because he sings to her.

“I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you.”

Mommy presses a hand to his shoulder and sort of nudges him away. She smiles while she does it.

“Neil stop, give Billy to me before he starts crying.”

The camera is up close, in Neil’s face. It catches him rolling his eyes and then drawing the backs of his fingers over baby Billy’s forehead. 

On the VCR, Billy’s little fingers mash into the pause button when Neil looks at the camera again. The frame freezes right there. Right on his face. Billy is entirely too close to the TV as he stares. He’s never seen this man before. Or at least doesn’t remember. Billy looks like his mommy. Everyone says that. An angel on earth and her cherub. But nobody holds a baby like that and sings to them unless they’re family. So… this must be his daddy. 

Where is he now? Why doesn’t Billy know him? It’s not like many of his friends next door or around the neighborhood all have their dads around. So it’s not weird. It hurts all the same. Mostly because Mommy had hidden the tape from him. Like she didn’t want him to see it. He can’t help the flash of anger at her, but it works its way out as a tremor in his bottom lip. It’s not fair. He wants to see his daddy.

“I want my daddy!” He shrieks the next time he’s forced to eat peas. He carries on screaming and crying, but Mommy and Aunt Carol share a look. Hyperventilating at the kitchen table, Billy wails, “I want my daddy!”

It takes Mommy picking him up and bundling him to her shoulder to get him to quiet. She carries him like he’s nothing, with his arms and legs wrapped around her, to their dark bedroom. Skipping Billy’s bed entirely, she lays him down on hers and pets his hair, shushes him until he stops crying. The heat of the day gives way to the cool of the night, although they sleep with the windows cracked and a fan pointed at them. No AC. None of the houses on their street have AC. He clings to her anyway when she holds the back of his head.

A sigh.

“Your daddy… I don’t talk to him anymore, Billy Goat.”

“Why?” He whines, ready to cry all over again.

“He hurt us, honey. A long time ago.” Her arms around him tighten to drag him closer. “That’s why we live with Aunt Cheryl. You like it here, right? You like your friends, you’re gonna start school in September. Aren’t you excited?”

What this has to do with Daddy, Billy doesn’t know. So he just sniffles and nods.

“We couldn’t live here if we lived with Daddy. I know it’s hard to understand, but please know I did it for you, honey.” She kisses his hair and shakes a little when she tucks her face there, too. They have the same hair. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

Billy watches the rest of the tape in secret. Wishing he understood why Daddy doesn’t live with them. Why he can’t, apparently. The rest of the tape isn’t long, barely ten minutes in all. He can count that high. He can add five and five together, knows it means ten. The other kids his age can’t do that, have to use their fingers and count. Not him. Mommy always says how proud she is of him. That he reads alone and can add things when they’re at the grocery store. Would Daddy be proud? Billy likes to think so as he watches a baby version of him totter around, sort of falling-walking and crawling between Mommy and Daddy on the tape. He’s older in this scene. Older than Daddy singing to him. Still a place he doesn’t recognize. But they look happy. So what happened?

It’s only a few nights later when Billy climbs into Mommy’s bed and tugs on her nightgown until she wakes up.

“What’s wrong, honey? Bad dream?” 

Billy shakes his head and climbs right in her arms when she opens them for him. He elbows a lot of her soft places on accident. He doesn’t mean to, just wants to be as close to her as possible. Before the tape, he didn’t have a daddy. Now he does, but he doesn’t really. The same could happen to her. Mommy could just disappear one day, too. Being alone is only fun when he’s snooping around and getting into things. Without Mommy here to do his hair and play with him and make him his favorite food… He would be alone. And that’s too scary to think about, so he curls up against her chest.

“I wanna see Daddy…”

A sigh. The hand already in his hair stutters where it pets him. But it doesn’t stop. 

“Billy Goat, I don’t know where he is. If he knew where we lived, he’d show up and cause trouble.”

Trying to keep a brave face and not cry, Billy asks so small, “Is Daddy bad?”

Like on TV. Mommy likes  _ Magnum, P.I. _ Tom Selleck beating up bad guys in Hawaii. Solve mysteries. Well, Mommy and Aunt Cheryl like the show. It’s something to watch, he guesses. He’s not supposed to watch TV unless one of them is with him. But he knows enough to feel along the thread of Mommy’s reluctance. Daddy doesn’t live with them for a reason. Maybe he’s like one of the bad people on  _ Magnum, P.I. _

“He’s…” Mommy quiets for a long time. Long enough for Billy to start to doze off again. So he’s not sure he’s even awake anymore or if he dreams Mommy sighing, “He’s not a good daddy, Billy Goat.”

Billy doesn’t forget about the tape marked ‘Billy and Daddy’ and doesn’t forget Mommy’s fear over this. How she’d clutch him to her that night. He cannot possibly understand the violence he never witnessed. Never in front of the baby. He cannot hope to remember Mommy scooping him up one night, barely able to say ‘mama or dada’ yet, black eye already shining on her, and fleeing with nothing more than her purse and a milk crate of things. His favorite stuffed animal, some clothes, any paperwork having to do with him. Formula and diapers were long hidden away in the trunk of her car. In case. She did it all for him. To protect him from the madness she thought would stop when he was born. Give Neil what he wants, and everything will be okay. It’s what she thought at the time. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  
  


When Billy is seven, shortly before his birthday before Halloween—he’s going to be a vampire this year—someone knocks on the front door. Mommy and Cheryl aren’t here. It’s a weekday, but some guy discovered America a long time ago today, apparently, so Billy is off. It’s raining outside, which is why he’s not next door with Mrs Alvarez’s grandkids. He’s not supposed to answer the door when he’s home alone. Well, he’s not supposed to be here alone either, but what Mommy and Cheryl don’t know won’t hurt them. Sometimes, he just wants to stay here and have the run of the whole house. It’s a jungle or a deserted island or a booby-trapped temple he has to traverse. Indiana Jones is cool, he guesses. More fun to watch than Mommy's  _ Magnum, P.I. _ anyway.

Still too short to press an eye to the peephole, Billy instead squats on his haunches by the window next to the door. Little fingers curl around the drape of the sheer curtains to steal a glance at whoever is outside. It’s a man. Tall in blue work pants and a light blue button-up shirt. Like the men who work on Mommy’s car when she takes Billy with her. Something is wrong with it. It’s working again for now, missing from the street where she usually parks it. There are black oil spots on the concrete. Billy holds his breath while the man gives his back to the door, staring at the empty spot on the street. Rubbing the back of his neck, the man turns around again and knocks once more. Billy sees his face and almost chokes when he tries to breathe.

‘Never talk to strangers. Never take anything from them, even if they said I said it was okay. They’re lying to you. Never get in a car with anyone but me or Cheryl. If someone tries to pick you up, scratch and bite them. Kick them as hard as you can and scream.’

So many instructions given to him over the years. Never all at the same time. Just always with the theme of ‘strangers are bad’ and ‘fight.’ He knows how to throw a punch now. And with Mommy’s blessing, he thinks it’s probably okay to kick a man between his legs if something bad were to happen. Even though he got in trouble for that at school, and Mommy made him promise to never kick someone there again. So Billy’s little heart beats just as fast as it can, faster than he’s ever felt, when he flicks the locks on the front door and pries it open. Just enough to catch the man’s attention and perk him up. The man looks down with blue eyes going a little wide. Mommy has brown eyes. Everybody is always asking where Billy gets his blue eyes from.

The initial surprise melts from the man’s face. Melts right into something soft and loving. Just like the man on Billy’s tape, holding baby him and singing to him. Billy doesn’t move to open the screen door when the man aims that smile down at him. Billy wouldn’t open the door, wouldn’t even acknowledge him if he weren’t 100% sure he knows who this is.

“Hey there,” he says warmly. He has a moustache and smooth skin, neat hair that’s trimmed short. Handsome. He doesn’t make a sound when he squats down to talk to Billy through the screen. “This is gonna sound weird but… is your name William Hargrove?”

No. No, and Billy frowns at that. Learning his first and last name, his address, and the phone number for the house were things they used to practice daily before he started school two years ago. His name is William Prince; Mommy is Emily Prince. So why doesn’t Daddy know his name?

Face shy in its sternness, Billy shakes his head instead of saying anything. He shouldn’t have opened the door. He knows that. But… 

Smile turning sad in his eyes, Daddy stays hunkered down when he asks, “Do you know who I am?”

There is so much hope woven into those words. Like when Billy wanders down the frozen aisle at the grocery store and stares at the ice cream, asking if they can get some. Can we, Mommy? Please? His daddy is right here, came here for him, maybe they can be together again. Billy remembers, late in the night, Mommy warning him that Daddy is bad. Billy doesn’t understand why or how, just believes her. She would never lie to him. He gets in big trouble when he lies. No music and he has to stand in the corner after dinner. To think about the fib he’d told. So he shouldn’t lie to Daddy either.

Still, Billy shifts slightly behind the front door when he nods. Not trying to hide but… Because he’s excited as hell to finally meet his dad but… 

‘He’s not a good daddy, Billy Goat.’

Daddy just breaks out into a bigger grin and hunches closer to the screen. Only that thin mesh to stop insects from coming into the house separates them. Billy doesn’t remember anything about the man in front of him. Just what he’s seen on the tape. And that feels more like watching a show on TV than connecting the people and the baby to him. His life. Still, to have Daddy grin at him like that. So happy, so prideful. Blue eyes just like his look him up and down, and then Daddy shakes his head. His eyes are a little wet, but he doesn’t reach up to rub them dry. Billy’s stomach gets in on the excitement with his heart. He’d been hungry before, was actually crossing the living room to raid the kitchen. Now, he couldn’t hope to stomach anything. Too nervous. Too excited.

“That’s so great, champ. I-I didn’t think you’d remember me.” Daddy glances to the screen door handle. He curls a finger around it and sort of jerks on it, rattling it where the latch is still caught. “Can I open this? I wanna give my son a hug.”

It’s the key to unlocking all of Billy’s sadness and confusion over this. Over bringing Mommy the tape so long ago only for her to hide it. Only for her to talk circles and vagueness around him whenever he asked her about Daddy. The screen door almost smacks Daddy in the knees when Billy shoves it open. He shouldn’t push on the screen part, but he doesn’t care about ripping or breaking it as he throws himself into Daddy’s arms. They’re already open for him, and Billy’s charge almost spills them to the smooth concrete of the stoop. Billy can’t climb him fast enough, can’t get his arms around Daddy’s neck fast enough to hold on. Don’t let me go, don’t let me go, don’t leave!

“Shhh, oh my little angel, shhh please don’t cry, it’s okay.”

He whines, “I missed you,” into the warmth of his dad’s neck. For the first time. “I missed you so much, Daddy.”

Warm hands on his back and in his hair pet the twin trembles they find. Daddy smells like cars and exhaust and cigarettes. Mommy and Cheryl try not to smoke around him, but he catches them anyway. He’s never thought such a smell could make him sob so hard until Daddy picks him up and carries him into the house. Boot kicking the door shut, the locks clicking back into place barely enter Billy’s ears. They’re full of static from his heart pounding, from his whimpers, from Daddy still shushing him.

The couch in the living room matches the recliner. Floral pattern so out of style and scratchy, cheap, it makes for a better place to sit them down than the floor. Billy helps himself to curling up against Daddy’s broad chest and hiding how he cries in the crisp collar of his work shirt. Daddy just keeps on petting his hair and hugging him so tightly. Squeezing until something pops in Billy’s back and he sags in the circle of those strong arms. All the fight and tension drain right out of him. He’s just a sniffling, shy boy when Daddy coaxes him up with both hands cupping his jaw.

“Lemme look at you, baby boy, haven’t seen you in so damn long,” Daddy whispers, petting curls out of his face. Daddy tries to meet his eyes, cocking his head when Billy bows his, but Billy won’t play ball. So Daddy huffs under tiny hands splayed on his chest and just goes about inspecting him. “I can’t believe how big you are. Last time I saw you, you were still in diapers. You’re like a little man, now.”

Thumbs stained under the nails from work pet his last tears away. Billy sniffles wet and gross between those hands and finally looks up. 

“Are you gonna stay with us?” He asks, so small. “Is that why you’re here? Are-are you gonna live with us again?”

Ah, but now Daddy’s face falls. Anger flashes first, finds some relief in his hands that grip Billy too hard. Only for a second. Blink and it’s over. Then sadness washes over him, and he shakes his head while drawing Billy to him. Billy thinks nothing of rolling his weight forward on his knees spread around Daddy’s lap. He sits like this with Mommy all the time, can’t get enough of her holding him. Daddy is bigger, warmer, stronger. Whenever Billy is bored or done sitting with Mommy, he just wiggles his way out of her lap and bounds off for some other thing to do. With thin lips kissing his forehead and breathing him in, Billy thinks it would take more than that to squirm away from Daddy. An actual challenge, because even when they play wrestle, Mommy always lets him win. And that’s no fun. Would Daddy play with him? After all this time?

“Sorry, angel, no. I can’t live with you and Mommy. And actually…” Daddy pulls them apart—not releasing Billy’s face, though—and casts a glance around the house. “Her car isn’t here. Her and Cheryl aren’t here, right?”

Billy nods.

“They’re at work until 5. It’s just me…” He sucks in a fast breath through his nose to stop the stinging in his eyes. “Why can’t you live with us, Daddy? Why can’t I see you?”

“Your mother,” Daddy grumbles to himself, scowl lingering only for a second before he tucks Billy to his chest and holds him tightly. “Your mother stole you from me and ran off. I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Billy.” His belly rolls with a bitter laugh. “She even changed your name. You know you were born William Hargrove, right?”

He doesn’t know that, so he shakes his head. He’s always been William Prince. But… maybe not? Why would Mommy keep that from him? Just like she kept Daddy from him. It’s almost a lie. And they don’t lie to each other.

Billy cuddles up to the shoulder under his cheek and whispers, “I wish we could live together. I don’t want you to go.”

“Oh angel, don’t cry. Come on, man up.” Daddy pats him firmly on the back before holding him again. “Your mother is making you soft with all her hippy shit. Real men don’t cry, Billy, now stop that.”

It flies directly in the face of everything Mommy has ever taught him. That he should be honest with how he feels and tell her so she can help him. Right now, he is all twisted up inside with sadness at the situation but pure joy that Daddy is here now. He focuses on that joy instead and slips a hand up to wipe his face. He doesn’t want to get tears or snot on his dad’s shirt. The hand in his hair tugs on his curls, up, so Billy obeys and sits up once more. All the way up until his bottom rests on Daddy’s thighs under him. He fits better in Daddy’s lap than Mommy’s, doesn’t feel like he’s crushing Daddy like he does Mommy.

“There we go,” Daddy sighs with a smile on his face again. The hand in Billy’s curls stays while the other drifts up and pats his cheek. It’s dry, now. “Good boy, no more crying. So you missed me, huh?”

Billy gives a wild nod of his head despite the hands holding him.

“I-I found a video tape in Mommy’s closet. We’re together and you were singing to me and Mommy, but I was a baby, so I guess it was a long time ago, but then Mommy wouldn’t talk about you, and she said she didn’t know where you were, so I couldn’t see you, and—”

“Slow your roll, Billy, you’re going a mile a minute,” Daddy laughs at him. “Energetic little boy, take a breath.”

But the thing is, he’s not usually like this. Teachers have labeled him ‘shy’ and the other kids in his class think he’s weird for playing by himself. At least his friends next door like him. They don’t care what he wants to play, if he wants to play alone. They just like him for him. He wishes they were in the same class so that way he could have them at school with him. It would make going anything as part of a group less stressful, make him feel wanted and included. He’s only wound up because his dad is finally here! They can finally see each other and talk, and Daddy will love him and be proud of him like Billy wants. 

When he’s calm again, Daddy’s hands slide away from his head to loop strong arms around Billy’s waist. Not holding him close like before when he’d cried. But the security sends his heart soaring, has him smiling despite ducking his head down to hide it. 

“I missed you a lot, Daddy.”

Daddy nods at that and searches his face for something.

“Your mother took you away from me. I want you to know that. Just stole you in the middle of the night, and I never saw you again. Until now.” An arm unravels from around him, and Daddy pets his jaw with a gentle curl of knuckles. “My little angel.”

Billy smiles up at him and says, “You sang something like that on the tape. Do you remember the song?”

“I sang it to you every night so you’d fall asleep,” Daddy laughs. “Of course I remember.”

Daddy’s handsome face is that much sweeter when he sings softly, “Earth angel, earth angel. Will you be mine? My darling dear, love you all the time. I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you.”

He smiles at the end, bows forward to kiss Billy’s forehead through his bangs spilling over it. 

Faces still tucked close, Daddy murmurs, “I never stopped loving you, angel. Never. Do you still love Daddy, too?”

Billy is almost nodding before the words are even out. He nods and closes his eyes under another kiss pressed to his forehead. Harder this time, Daddy making sure he can really feel it. They’re chest-to-chest after that as Daddy crushes him in a squeezing embrace. Billy startles in it, doesn’t even pop off his bottom because Daddy is so strong. Billy relaxes against him just as quickly and worms his arms back around Daddy’s neck, returning his embrace. Daddy’s stomach pushes into his when he sucks in a huge, loud breath. Billy just holds on and hides his face against his dad’s neck.

His ear tickles with soft words, a gentle insistent, “Please tell me, angel. Please tell Daddy you still love him.”

Billy doesn’t hesitate at all. His heart is too full to question it. How before he’d found the tape, this man didn’t exist. Billy’s hunger to know him and be loved by him didn’t exist. And now it does, and it’s leaking everywhere, and he can’t stop it.

“I love you, Daddy. I don’t want you to go.”

“No crying, now,” Daddy reminds him. “None of that, buster.” Stomach lifting Billy with a sigh, Daddy says next, “I love you too, though. Very much, no matter what. Wish I could be here so we could say it all the time.”

“Me, too.”

Daddy can’t stay too long, though. Mrs Alvarez may waddle over in the rain to check on him. She has a key to the house. The deadbolt won’t stop her. And even though Daddy doesn’t say as much, Billy knows no one can know he’d been here. He can’t tell Mommy, Cheryl, his friends, no one. Mommy stole him from Daddy once; she can do it again. Still, Billy clings to Daddy’s work pants when they’re by the front door.

“Please don’t go. I don’t want you to go!”

The moment Daddy’s knees bend to bring them together, Billy beats him to it. He leaps with everything in him to cling to Daddy’s neck and climb up him. His legs hug Daddy’s torso in the blink of an eye. It will take a prybar to wedge Billy loose.

“Now, Billy…”

“When are you coming back? When am I gonna see you again?”

He begs the questions, needs a response or he’ll burst into tears. Daddy says men don’t cry, but it’s what Billy wants to do. It won’t get him his way, but he is so small and so full of feelings. 

Patting his back and looping an arm under his rear, Daddy sighs to him, “I don’t know when I can come see you again, angel. It’s… complicated. Now that I know where you and your mother are, I can try to reason with her. Or I can get a lawyer involved, but I don’t want to do that. So it’s complicated right now, but I’ll work something out with your mother. Understand?”

No, he doesn’t understand, but he nods anyway. The hand on his back wanders into his hair and gently tugs him up with curls coiled around long fingers. Daddy holds him there while looking at him. Smiling so soft like every other time.

“But I found you, baby, and I’ll never let you go. Okay, Billy? I’ll never let you go.”

On cue, Billy leans his head into the fingers in his hair and pleads, “I love you, Daddy, please don’t leave…”

“I’m not leaving forever. Your mother isn’t going to take you away from me again, baby boy. I’m going to fight for you, maybe I can try to get full custody of you.” Daddy sighs, like he’s happy, and then smiles down at Billy. “Would you like that, angel? To come live with your Daddy?”

He nods at first but then amends it with a shy, “I want us to be together again. Like we were in the tape I saw. Did we live together then? You brought me to Mommy lying in a bed.”

“That was our bed,” Daddy explains, hefting Billy back up his torso with the arm under his bottom.

“I wish we could sleep together… Did we before?”

Daddy leans against the locked front door to pull Billy closer to him. Their foreheads brush, and Daddy holds him like that while taking in calm breaths.

“We did, angel, we all shared a bed. You between your mother and me, we held you all the time so you never woke up alone. You don’t know how much I miss that.” 

Billy still doesn’t wake up alone, but he wishes they could do that. Be together again. Before he gets another plea for Daddy to stay, though, his dad urges them apart. He doesn’t set Billy down yet, but he creates space between them.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can, angel. And I’ll miss you every second until I do. Now, give your Daddy a kiss goodbye.”

They’re already in each other’s breathing space. So it takes nothing for Billy to dart forward and smack a kiss to his dad’s lips. 

They’re still close when Daddy murmurs, “My little angel, I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Daddy. Promise you’ll come back.”

Billy is already back on the ground, arms sliding from around him, when Daddy says with a smile, “Promise.”


	2. Chapter 2

Billy is ten on this first Saturday of December—23 days until Christmas. Warning him not to run ahead, his daddy follows. Despite Daddy having him every other weekend, each moment with him is so new and exciting. He’s never unhappy when he’s with his daddy. Daddy spoils him rotten.

“Cool your jets, buster. We’ll get there when we get there.”

Hopefully there aren’t too many people coming to see the new movie this early in the morning. The theater had opened an hour ago. This is the first showing of  _ The Little Mermaid _ today, but this is also its first weekend. Somehow Daddy had tickets, picked up from Billy talking about it on the phone that he wanted to see it. The phone calls have been happening since shortly after Daddy knocked on their front door years ago. Three years later and he’s with Daddy a little more all the time. Eventually? Daddy says he’ll have Billy every weekend. And then maybe a few weeks. He won’t stop until he has full custody. It’s what he said, anyway. Billy is just happy to be here. Mommy doesn’t have the time, and Billy won’t hold it against her. Daddy can take him.

“I got all A’s on my last report card,” he boasts proudly, chin high even as they walk.

“That’s my boy.” Daddy’s hand corralling him at his shoulder slips up to his mop of hair and ruffles the curls. “Keep it up, angel, you don’t wanna let me down, do you?”

“I won’t! School is so easy, no challenge at all.”

Daddy ruffles his hair again and then steps up to the ticket booth. Billy waits quietly at his hip, almost reaching up to tangle a hand in Daddy’s dress shirt. Daddy isn’t in his work clothes today, doesn’t carry the tang of engine grease with him. Daddy’s cologne had been spicy and something else, almost dirty in his nose when Billy hugged him tightly about the neck last night. When Daddy picked him up from home Friday night. Just like every other weekend for the past six month. Daddy held him there for a few seconds more until Billy squirmed to be let go. Their embrace ended with a brush of Daddy’s lips over his cheek, Billy kissing him back barely a second later. Long enough for Daddy’s lips to be under his, not that Billy minded. He always kisses Daddy like that. It’s just what they do.

Billy’s mind is far from kisses when he tugs on Daddy’s hand to draw him faster to the concession stand. Of course Mommy wants to take him to see this, but she doesn’t have the time. She’s always so tired when she gets off work, and the tickets go up in price in the evening and on the weekends. Billy must have mentioned it to Daddy at some point, probably while mad at Mommy. Because it’s weird for him to want to see  _ The Little Mermaid _ apparently. So what if it’s about a dumb princess? Are the kids at school missing the whole part where she’s a mermaid? Every time waves have lapped at Billy’s ankles, he wished they were real, believed they were for a long time. Wanted to be one, too, his love of the ocean so deep. He and Mommy are happy when they’re on the beach. At one point, it was the only place where he was truly happy.

Now? His bedroom in Daddy’s apartment is a happy place, too. Daddy lives close so when he eventually has Billy for weeks at a time, it won’t cause an issue with school. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Billy doesn’t have any friends at school anyway, so what does it matter? His natural state is to be alone or maybe on the couch with Mommy if his homework is done. Daddy is slowly becoming a new normal, too. A new source of happiness. It’s different, being close to Daddy on weekends now instead of talking to him on the phone. It’s real again. His daddy is real and loves him so much, always tells him with a hand petting him. Daddy’s angel.

Billy’s whole body is light like he has wings as he goes running for the seats in the back of the room, way at the top near the projector.

Behind him at the bottom of the stairs, “Watch it going up there, Billy, I don’t want you to trip.”

Billy has been trusted with the popcorn. He won’t do anything to ruin their Saturday

“I won’t,” he huffs. “I’m not a baby.”

“We’ll see how you are when you fall on your behind, won’t we?”

It’s as much sass as Daddy will take. Unless Billy’s next words are, ‘Yes, sir,’ he best zip his lips. So he takes the stairs at a slower trot until the last row is before him. Billy finds the two seats in the middle and claims one, smiling up at Daddy in the dim light.

“All the way up here, angel?”

Billy just hops in the squeaky chair, testing the hinge where the seat stays down under his weight alone.

“Nobody behind us! It’s the best spot.”

Daddy does glance to the painted wall behind them. The projector beams white light just above. The movie hasn’t started yet. It’s still light in here. Daddy hums and then hands one of the Cokes to Billy. Mommy doesn’t let him drink Coke, and the sweet and almost bloody tang to it makes him shiver. The popcorn is next, his fingers oily from the butter immediately. He shoves popcorn into his mouth, and between grabs, Daddy steals some, too. They leave the bucket in Billy’s lap. Let him get popcorn all over him. 

Mouth clear, though, Billy does cast a smile up at his dad while catching his eye. Blue, same as him.

“Thanks for the movie, Daddy.”

“You’re welcome, angel. And good manners, too, I like that.”

It’s a double swell of pride for Billy. To give respect and receive that praise in return. Daddy doesn’t take much sass, but he’ll accept ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and a quick ‘yes, sir’ in an instant. Billy has it down like clockwork, ready to be good. Ready for Daddy to tousle his hair or hug him. Or call him ‘angel’ like that all sweet. Good boy.

The lights dim when the movie plays. Ariel’s obsession with the human world disappoints Billy immediately. There’s nothing special about the stuff she’s singing. She has no idea how good she has it! Billy would give anything to swim forever like that. He huffs and shoves more popcorn in his mouth. At least the songs are fun. Sebastian is right, she should just stay. Billy would listen to him. He bobs around in the beat to the faster pace of this song, only for Daddy to grab his knee in the dark. Billy just manages not to jump and scatter popcorn everywhere.

“Keep still, angel, you’re squirming all over the place.”

He does as he’s told, presses his back into the springy theater seat. Daddy hums at him, pleased that he’s calmed so quickly, and then sits back as well. It’s chilly in the theater, temperature slowly dipping outside as the days go on, too. Never truly cold, but enough for jeans and a t-shirt instead of shorts. Even still, Daddy’s hand is warm through Billy’s jeans. It doesn’t move from holding Billy just above his knee. Even when Billy shifts his leg, Daddy doesn’t let him go. So Billy stays as still as he can. Daddy can trust him to be good. He won’t dance around anymore.

The movie goes on. Ariel is human and flexing her toes in the sand when Daddy’s hand finally moves. Up his leg, fingertips dragging on the inseam of Billy’s jeans. It’s not the first time Daddy has grabbed his thigh like this. If Billy is too rowdy watching TV in his lap, he grabs Billy like this, too. Reclining against his daddy’s chest, Billy always winds down and just watches whatever is on. It will be baseball in the spring, but for now it’s football. Sometimes wrestling, but it’s cheesy and fake. Anything to pass the time together, sitting in Daddy’s lap while Daddy sips a beer. He’s let Billy once or twice. It tastes bad, but it must be good somehow for Daddy and Mommy to drink. Cheryl too. Billy just doesn’t understand yet. He will in time, he just knows it.

Billy can’t help the tremble that races through him while Ariel slowly loses her prince to Ursula renegading as a human girl. The theater is even colder, now, and Billy is hyper aware of the heat of his daddy’s hand on him. He shakes enough to alert his dad, because the cloud of his cologne tickles Billy’s nose when he bends closer.

“You okay, angel? You’re shaking.”

He squeezes Billy’s thigh to drive it home. That just gets Billy shaking more.

“I’m… a little cold…”

Daddy sucks his teeth, murmurs, “Why didn’t you say something?” And then the world tilts.

Billy slaps his arms around the popcorn so it doesn’t go tumbling to the floor. Daddy is strong enough to stay seated while swooping Billy up to drop the young boy in his lap. Daddy’s legs sort of splay around his thighs, but Billy is still in his lap all the same. In the dark, no one can see them. Daddy’s arms slither around to hold him. All up and down Billy’s back and hugging his bottom is his dad’s radiant warmth. The heavy arms around him help trap heat, too. Enough until Billy stops shaking. He’s used to sitting in Daddy’s lap. It’s like they’re in his apartment, on the couch. Normal.

“Better?” Lips tickle his ear with the one word.

Billy nods, mindful to not talk and get shushed. He just leans into his dad’s chest and relaxes for the rest of the movie. He could fall asleep just like this. Does sometimes when they’re on the couch, only to wake up in Daddy’s bed instead of his. Alone and with the door open, but in Daddy’s bed. Which is fine with Billy, since the pillows smell like Daddy’s hair and maybe a tiny bit like his cologne. It grows on Billy the more he’s around it. Suits his daddy somehow.

When Ariel ends up with human legs again, human forever despite Billy’s immense sense of betrayal, Daddy shifts under him. The movie is almost over, he guesses. Billy needs to return to his seat and so sits up to do that.

“Don’t move, angel,” Daddy breathes in his ear. “Sit still and be a good boy for me. Keep quiet.”

Daddy shifts again, hands at Billy’s hips. It’s just the slight pressure of Daddy’s body under him. Pressing up. Just barely. Daddy had done the same thing last weekend before they piled in his truck to bring Billy back to the house. Back to Mommy. They kissed goodbye in Daddy’s apartment, hugged goodbye with Mommy watching from the front door. When they hug goodbye, Billy often remembers Mommy crying in the bathroom one night after Daddy first showed up. Crying about something, ‘restraining order’ reaching his ears but making no sense. That was right before Daddy’s first phone call. With a lawyer chiming in when Mommy tried to wrench the phone out of Billy’s hand. She locked herself in the bathroom during that first call. Billy climbed into her bed when she finally came to sleep, and she clutched him to her chest all night. He woke up sore the next morning from her holding him too tightly. He’ll probably be sore from Daddy’s hands again.

Humid breath puffs in his ear the longer Daddy holds him. Shifts more under him, but it’s still just tiny movements under him. The lights haven’t turned back on as the credits begin to roll. When Daddy’s hands tighten too much at Billy’s hips, he curls up with his bottom digging in hard to Daddy’s thighs. Anything to escape the pinch of strong fingers into his hipbones. But Daddy gasps in his ear, shudders under Billy in his lap. Then his hands become cradling once more. They pet him through his jeans, hem of his t-shirt unucked and playing games with Daddy’s fingertips. The calluses there almost brush him. Not before Daddy sighs and lifts him up, settling him right back in the seat he’d abandoned closer to the beginning of the movie.

“Don’t leave any trash behind, Billy. Make sure you clean up after yourself.”

It’s slow going down the stairs behind Daddy. Billy understands why what with two empty Coke bottles in his hands. Could be dangerous. Daddy sort of staggers down the stairs anyway, pauses for anyone trying to exit in front of him. By the time they rid themselves of everything at the bottom of the stairs, Billy dances on his tiptoes. Mommy doesn’t let him drink Coke. Billy thinks he understands why, is never this jittery and needing to run around but also sleep. That and he has to go to the bathroom wicked bad.

Trailing behind his dad, Billy complains, “Daddy wait, I have to go to the bathroom.”

“We’re not that far from the apartment, Billy. You can hold it.”

Well… if Daddy says so, then he can. And Billy tries. How terribly he tries. Sits up tall, shifts his weight onto his tailbone. Relieving pressure. Squeezes his thighs together and even goes so far as to cross his legs. All in vain. They’re at the stoplight within sight of Daddy’s apartment when Billy can’t take it anymore.

He grips the seat under him and the plastic inside of the door hard enough to bleach white under his nails. The seat of his jeans and his lap are hot and wet in a second. He can’t stop it once it starts, just bites his lower lip as shame hot like a sunburn stains his cheeks. They come to a harsh stop in front of Daddy’s apartment, but Billy has no hope of rising. Not with the front of his jeans soaked. Daddy slips out of the truck, gets all the way to the front door before he realizes Billy hasn’t moved. When he returns, it’s only to open the passenger door and tower above Billy.

“Angel… Did you wet your pants in Daddy’s truck?”

He’s too tense to answer, choking on shame.

“Answer me, Billy.”

So small, “Yes, sir,” with tears about to squeeze out of his eyes.

Silence. Agony.

And then calmly, “Get inside, leave your dirty clothes in your room, and then lie face down on my bed. Understand?”

The front of Billy’s jeans is cold now. Uncomfortable and infinitely worse than the warm rush of piss.

“I won’t ask you again, Billy.”

“I understand.”

“Hop to it.”

It’s a gun going off to signal the start of a race. Billy spills himself to the parking lot in his haste to drop out of the truck. Daddy lingers by the open passenger door, hands holding his hips as he watches Billy skeeter away. Trying to cover himself. The front door of the apartment is already unlocked, Billy rooted in the truck long enough for Daddy to get this far. Billy barely remembers to shut the door behind him before bolting for his room. Clothes peeled off and left in a disgusting pile, Billy throws himself on his daddy’s bed. He wants to cry, wants to bury his face in a pillow and scream. Because Daddy is upset with him, because he made a mess of himself like a little kid. What’s going to happen now?

Footsteps pause just outside the bedroom. Billy flinches on the bed, tuning into his nudity. Daddy wouldn’t want his soiled clothes on the bed for whatever this is. Billy also wants a bath sooner than later. The hiss of hot water running tickles his ears as Daddy steps into the room. His body had blocked the gurgle of the tub filling. Daddy must be running a bath for him. He’ll probably just lecture Billy for disobeying him. 

“That was a bad thing you did just now, angel. You know that.”

Shoulders ready hunched into his big ears, Billy tries, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!”

“You’ll be in a world of trouble if you start crying, so I suggest you button that lip.”

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers with his fists tight in the blanket on Daddy’s bed. Always neat and made like he’d never slept in it. Billy had to learn how to do that when he started coming over here. He never makes his bed at home. “I promise I’ll never do it again.”

Daddy sighs behind him, something rustling just under the play of his disappointment, “I know you won’t, angel. Lie still and keep quiet while I do this. If you scream, I’ll start over.”

Billy has no earthly idea what ‘this’ is until the bright, skin-like snap of Daddy’s belt cuts through the air. Some of the Alvarez kids at home get belted. Beaten with all sorts of things, they tell him. Mommy has never hit him, would rather hold him while he tantrums or just let him talk until he runs out of air and just has to cry to get it all out. Daddy is different. Crying is bad for some reason, and screaming and carrying on are right up there with it. So Billy can’t know what’s about to happen, but he has an idea after that sound. After Daddy’s free hand slides heavy in the small of his back to hold him down.

“I’m going to count them out this first time,” Daddy explains. “But in the future when you’re being punished, you’ll count. If you forget which number we’re on, I start over. Do you understand, Billy?”

No, but he nods anyway. It’s best to just agree with Daddy even when he’s confused.

The confusion breaks like a dropped plate and just as loudly when Daddy brings his belt down on Billy’s rear end. At the last second, with his mouth hanging open and ready to scream, Billy slaps both hands over his mouth to catch the wail. It squeals muffled into his palm. But he doesn’t let it out. Daddy holds him down harder for the next two swipes. On the other cheek and then one of his thighs. Daddy doesn’t hit him in the same spot twice. At least not that Billy can feel, not that he can feel much of anything after Daddy counts out five. He’s numb and breathing entirely too hard where he hyperventilates through his nose. Breathing through his mouth is too dangerous. He may let out a scream. And then this hell will start all over again. He is no longer in his body when Daddy’s weight disappears from the bed, when his hand pets down Billy’s back to touch the heat in his skin.

Billy flinches away with a whine, but Daddy keeps on petting him, shushing him. Tears spill towards his jaw just as hot and humiliated as the rest of him. He manages to rub them away before Daddy’s hands flip him over and then pick him up. One arm curling behind Billy’s knees and the other supporting his shoulders, Daddy cradles the poor boy to his chest and walks the short distance to the bathroom they share. The tub is full and steaming, so Daddy slaps the taps off. He sets Billy down but does not let go of him. Billy is grateful as he sways on his rubbery legs. They tremble without his permission, weaker than he has ever known them. The whole of him floats through the world. Even his thoughts are fog. Nothing is real until Daddy picks him up again and has him stand in the shin-deep water.

“Lean against the wall while I wash you, angel. You did so well just now, I’m very proud of you for not screaming.”

That draws Billy back into his body. Which he regrets when his buzzing bottom makes contact with the tiles behind him. Their chill should be welcome relief, but he whimpers and flinches away. Daddy has to guide him with big hands on his trembling thighs to lean where he wants him. Daddy keeps his hands there for a few breaths until Billy relents and sags against the wall. Only the friction between his back and the chilly tiles keeps him up. His knees are useless, buckling things. He stares down with his chin in his chest as Daddy, powerful forearms bare with his sleeves rolled up, lathers up his hands. No washcloth. Daddy even bathes him differently from Mommy.

When Billy is here on the weekends, the first thing that happens on Friday night is a bath. Never a shower. Daddy usually fills the tub halfway for him, and Billy washes himself. Under Daddy’s watchful eye. Like he’s a baby and can’t do it himself. Daddy will either kneel beside the tub and entertain Billy’s energetic rambling or sit on the toilet and nod and hum along. Last weekend had been the first time Daddy helped. He didn’t ask. He sat Billy down on his bottom in the tub and washed Billy’s hair for him. It’s not something someone has helped him with since he was little. He can do it all himself, objected to Daddy helping. In a playful way. But Daddy insisted in that stern way of his that doesn’t allow arguing. So Billy sat there with a shrug and let his daddy help him. Right now, Billy needs all the help he can get. His hands won’t stop trembling where they dangle useless by his sides.

Soapy hands up and down his chest pet him everywhere. Under his arms, over his ribs, slick palms even skating down his arms to clean between his fingers. Everywhere except his head which is plenty clean. Daddy leaves the top half of him covered in soap while dipping his hands in the water and working up fresh lather. Billy barely flinches when Daddy reaches for the first thigh, working down his leg to where clear water laps at his tan skin. He’ll pale as winter drags on. But for now, his skin clings to the summer honeyglow Daddy has complimented him on. Being a busy boy outside and in the sun. Daddy says he wants Billy to join a sports team during the summer. Baseball maybe. Billy doesn’t want to, but keeps his mouth shut about it. Anything to make Daddy happy and keep the man in his life. Even dumb, boring baseball.

Billy does flinch when Daddy switches to the other thigh. Daddy had hit this one more, and the angry pain throbbing in his skin soaks through the whole limb. Even the gentle glide of Daddy’s hands with soap is too much. Billy gives his first whine of distress since it’d stopped, but Daddy keeps on washing him. Those big hands rinse yet again as Billy’s strength threatens to give out. Like he’s stood in the waves of an off-shore storm as they assault the coast, beating mercilessly against him. He’s only ever been this jelly-legged because of that. It distracts him, the crash of the ocean in his mind so real, when Daddy’s soapy hands push his thighs apart.

“Gotta get the rest of you, angel, open up.”

Oh but… Even Mommy doesn’t wash him here. When she helps, which isn’t often anymore. If he’s being a brat about it, she’ll treat him like a baby to coax him out of his tantrum. Works every time, because he hates it when she does that. So Billy’s first instinct is to clamp his thighs right back together and shy away from his dad. That’s the physical equivalent of sassing Daddy, though, and Daddy’s hands are less gentle when they jerk him back into position. Holding him there even as Billy’s strength trembles to close his legs.

“I-I can do it,” he pleads, already holding out a weak hand for the bar of soap. “I can do the rest, Daddy.”

He cannot roll free the stone that sits heavy in his stomach. Because besides conversations of strangers—something he’d violated upon first meeting his daddy—Mommy also told him about this, too. Warned him to never let anyone but her or a doctor touch him here. Never. If someone tried, he should kick and scream like they were strangers. Even if they weren’t. But… this is his daddy. Daddy wouldn’t hurt him. Ignoring the belting just now, Daddy would never hurt him. Daddy had to do that, because Billy made a mess. Billy understands consequences just fine, lives his life to avoid them. To avoid the corner after dinner, to avoid having his music taken away, to avoid not getting dessert because he’d mouthed off about eating peas. If he’s a good boy, none of that happens. 

It’s the first time Billy has looked in his dad’s eyes since running from the truck. They are as blue as always. Expecting Billy’s compliance, for him to fall in line in an instant. Billy holds their stare, never one to back down when someone is in his face. It’s something that earns him bruised lips and scuffed knees. Fighting. Never at school. He fought the one time and could barely live with Mommy being disappointed in him. But amongst his friends around the neighborhood? It’s all friendly fights. All chins and chests jutted out. Boys will be boys. To Billy, Daddy is no different than that, so he stares back when eyebrows flick up at him.

“If you try to wash yourself, you’ll make another mess.” Daddy’s hands on his thighs squeeze to drive that point home. His voice softens ever so slightly when he adds, “You’re shaking like a leaf, angel. Let Daddy do this for you.”

That’s the last that will be said about Daddy washing between his legs. There is no other option, only moving forward with it. So despite the stone in Billy’s stomach grinding away at him, he nods and obeys. Stops trying to seal his thighs shut. Stops twitching his hands at his sides to maybe reach up and push Daddy away. That would be a mistake. He knows that already. Because sometimes while they’re watching TV… Billy doesn’t want to sit in his daddy’s lap. Sometimes he just wants to stretch out in a corner and take up space. But if they’re on the couch? He’s in Daddy’s lap. That’s just how it is. Billy only resisted the one time, stopped resisting because Daddy pinched his hips and the top of his thigh to make him stop struggling. It stung just enough along with Daddy lamenting Billy didn’t want to sit with him for Billy to give it up. He gives this struggle up, too, and just watches Daddy’s big hands wash him.

Daddy’s voice leaks out in a hum while making sure to scrub Billy everywhere. He says nothing about Billy flinching at the touches to his little penis and then deeper between his legs. Even he doesn’t pay too close attention to this during a bath or shower. The passage of time narrows down like he’s waiting for the final bell to ring at school—each second taking twice, three times longer to pass than normal. Daddy only needs one hand to do this, to roll soap and soft flesh around in his palm. The other slides flat over Billy’s chest where he still needs to dunk down in the water and rinse. Daddy presses him flush to the wall, leaning weight into him, while tucking fingers between Billy’s cheeks.

Billy’s next flinch splashes water around his legs. He almost says something. Almost opens his mouth to tell his daddy that he’s clean now, that Daddy already washed him everywhere. Daddy especially doesn’t need to wash his butt like this, and Billy cannot ignore the wrongness of it. But every time he flicks his eyes up from the play of muscles shifting in Daddy’s forearm to meet blue eyes watching him, the objections die. This is his daddy, after all. Mommy’s warning about bad touching is for strangers or creeps. People who stare at them when they’re shopping or when Mommy bends down for something. Billy catches them staring at her all the time, because Mommy is beautiful. He usually blocks their view of her and glares with all the heat his baby face can muster. It’s a kitten hissing at a junkyard dog, but someone has to protect Mommy. Daddy isn’t one of them. Daddy loves him, and Billy trusts that love.

The hair on Daddy’s arms lifts up as a shiver runs through him. His breaths are calm when he finally stops petting callused fingers back and forth, up and down the crack of Billy’s ass. The hand in the center of Billy’s chest slips to curl around his upper arm, urging him to turn around. They’re not done yet. Billy could just whine and flop his head back, petulant. But he shuffles around to face the wall as Daddy silently bids him. Just a little more and he can sit in the water that’s losing its heat. He just wants to sit. His backside still pulses with dull pain from Daddy’s belt. Billy’s little hands flatten on the wall on either side of his head as he begs, prays for that to never happen again. He never wants to disappoint his daddy like that ever again. He can be good. He can do this.

Callused fingertips pet the edge of the heat in Billy’s bottom when Daddy murmurs in his ear, “You know why I had to do this, right son? I didn’t wanna hurt you, angel, but you gave me no choice.”

Daddy’s whole palm cups the bottom curve of a cheek, and Billy cowers away when he mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

A kiss to the nape of his neck startles Billy in the water, almost sends him slipping on the smooth bottom of the tub. But Daddy goes on washing the irritated backs of his thighs and his butt. Daddy lingers there just like while washing between Billy’s legs, but he’s so far beyond worrying about it. Exhaustion from the belting wants to drag him to his knees, into sleep. Maybe he’ll fall asleep in Daddy’s lap when they pile onto the couch. Or maybe Daddy will just let him nap after all this. Something. Billy rests his forehead against the tiles, ignoring how the tips of his bangs are damp, and just sways on his feet as Daddy touches him. Hands petting over the burn in his butt and thighs barely hurts anymore, like each caress chases the sensation away. Billy is plenty numb when Daddy turns the water back on and pushes Billy’s shoulders down.

“Okay, baby boy, I’m all done with you,” Daddy says with a smile in his voice. Billy’s head is too heavy for him to lift it and meet that smile. “You were such a good boy, Billy. I’m very proud of you, staying quiet for me and listening. Very proud.”

Billy isn’t so tired that the corners of his mouth don’t pull up in a shy smile. See, he says to himself. It had all been worth it. He’ll avoid disappointing Daddy in the future, promises himself he’ll never cry under the crack of Daddy’s belt again. If he’s a good boy, Daddy doesn’t have to do that again. Daddy always gives him plenty of time to listen to what he wants, always gives him time to obey. Billy just needs to be better about it. He can do better. Sinking into the water, fresh heat swirling around him as Daddy mixes it with his hand, Billy tips his head up and smiles with his eyes closed. He could fall asleep just like this. Wonderful heat soothing the ache in his bottom and thighs, Daddy’s hands cupping his jaw to hold him. If only he could nap here.

Just like carrying Billy into the bathroom, Daddy is the one to scoop him up and carry him right back out. Bundled in a towel for his body and another for his head, Billy doesn’t move in his daddy’s arms. He’s going wherever Daddy wants him, which turns out to be back in his bedroom. Billy flinches at first, memory of the bite of leather too fresh in his mind. Daddy shushes him and ducks his head down to kiss Billy’s forehead. It’s enough reassurance to have him lax in strong arms again. Daddy sets him down on his feet, knees not any stronger than when Daddy had first picked him up, and then those big hands set about rubbing him dry through the towel.

“Get your hair, angel. When you’re dry, we’ll lie down for a nap. How does that sound?”

Daddy could offer Billy ice cream and cotton candy and all his favorite treats and Billy would still pick the nap. So he nods with Daddy’s hands all over him and rubs at his hair at a slower pace. It takes everything in him to not crumble to the floor from his dad’s rough handling. When Daddy whips the towel off him, smile rather proud of himself, Billy holds the other towel up for him. A hand pets through his damp curls to judge if they’re dry enough. Daddy hums and takes the towel from him, stands from where he’d knelt in front of Billy.

“Good enough.” He nods to the bed. “Climb in, I’ll be right there.”

It’s all the direction Billy needs. He is a newborn lamb while crawling naked between the blanket and sheets—shaking to hold himself up and struggling to lift the blanket. But once it’s on top of him, muffling his shivers, he sinks into the bed. Or maybe it tries to swallow him, one or the other. Curled up on his side with his back basically to the door, Billy tries to get a head start on the nap. They nap together plenty, although it’s only even been on the couch. Daddy stretched out on his back with Billy on top of him, arms looped around him to keep him close. So Billy isn’t sure what to make of the blanket lifting and warm skin pressed to his back. Billy blinks at the window on the far wall only for his pretty blues to widen slowly as he tunes into his daddy lying naked behind him.

Under the covers, Daddy’s heavy arm slips around Billy’s waist to hold him. Daddy scoops him up and makes sure not a single gasp of air separates their skin. Billy only startles when Daddy’s palm settles over his navel and then pets him all up and down his front. Billy’s thighs curled up towards his stomach, preserving heat, prevent his hand from going any lower. He… doesn’t think Daddy would pet him there. Why would he? This is the same as Mommy carrying him into their bedroom after he tantrums about something and just holds him and pets him until he calms down. It’s just that Billy’s back is to him, so all Daddy has to pet is his chest and belly. So the initial fear drains away. It’s just his daddy comforting him and loving him. It’s fine. At least Daddy is warm under the covers with him. Billy doesn’t mind the lack of clothes. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. 

Lips tickle his ear when Daddy murmurs to him, “Sweet dreams, my little angel. I’ll wake us up in an hour.” Daddy’s palm wanders to Billy’s side, and his fingers wiggle there to tickle him. Billy barely moves, but he hums through his happiness. Almost asleep. He almost misses the kiss to the back of his neck and the gentle, “I love you, Billy. Very much.”

Billy is too far gone to mumble it back. He feels it in his heart, though, and it grows as Daddy pets him to sleep. Down the outside of his thigh and up his chest. Up down, up down until everything is muted and so far away. He’ll forget the awful humiliation of wetting himself. He’ll forget the fear of Daddy holding him down and beating him red with the belt. He’ll forget the lurch in his stomach of Daddy taking so long to clean between his legs. Forget, forget, forget. All of it washed away in his mind until only the shining image of his daddy remains. Daddy loves him, and Billy trusts that love.


	3. Chapter 3

Billy is eleven when he gets the good news. That he’s going to trade off weeks living with Daddy. For two weeks, he’ll be home with Mommy. The other two weeks? He’ll be in Daddy’s apartment. It’s only a few blocks away, so if he misses Mommy, it’s a simple bike ride home. Oh, Daddy had bought him a bike for his birthday this year. He’s not allowed on the main road, has to stay on the three blocks between the apartment and the house. Daddy warned he’d find out if Billy strayed off that approved stomping ground. Which he won’t, because most of his friends hang out at their grandmother’s house anyway. He does not want for wandering.

Living with Daddy isn’t at all like living with Mommy. He has to keep his room spotless all the time. Has to make his bed every morning before school. Daddy lets him walk to school like Mommy does, but just barely. It took a lot of convincing from Billy to keep that privilege. And Daddy warned that if Billy got in trouble at school or didn’t make all As on his report card that Daddy would have to drop him off. Which is so uncool, something only babies have to deal with. So Billy keeps to himself at school more than ever before to not have things taken away from him. It’s easy enough. He doesn’t have friends at school. 

Living with Daddy is different in other ways, too. It had taken some getting used to, Billy’s initial spike of uncertainty the only resistance he ever put up. Much like when he was younger and slept with Mommy instead of in his bed, they do the same here. Only most of the time, they go to bed after Daddy gives him a bath. And they sleep together naked. It made Billy nervous the first time he was awake enough to watch his daddy undress and hang up his clothes in the closet. Daddy just turned to him like it was nothing, mindless of the hairiness and nudity of himself, and scooped Billy up to hold him while they slept. More often than not? He’s in Daddy’s bed and cuddled to his daddy’s chest while he dreams. 

It’s… only weird in the mornings. Sometimes. Billy chews on the inside of his cheek while playing with his cereal. He needs to eat, needs to hurry up and leave for school. This morning had been one of  _ those _ times, though. When Billy wakes up lazy and warm and comfortable. Only to slowly tune in to Daddy plastered along his back, sweating and panting so quietly. The first time, Billy was half asleep one second and then fully, terrifyingly awake the next. The only things that calmed him down and prevented him from alerting Daddy that he was awake were the soft kisses to the top of his head. And Daddy’s hand on his hip staying gentle while the rest of him rocked into Billy’s backside. Something wet and firm and warm, too terrifying to think about what it was. Billy didn’t understand then why Daddy did that to him sometimes, still doesn’t understand it now. This morning was the only time Daddy whispered his name, though.

“Billy,” he’d panted, hips snapping faster against Billy’s body, soft with sleep. “My little angel, my baby boy…” He froze at that point, and pulses of heat bloomed in the small of Billy’s back. When it was over, Daddy relaxed into the bed and went about petting a shaking hand all over Billy’s stomach and chest. Like when they fall asleep. He murmured on repeat, far away, “Billy, Billy, Billy…”

So much uncertainty makes a storm out of his stomach. He’s not hungry, thinks too much about his name panted into his hair… Whatever Daddy had done to make the warmth on his skin. The next time Billy moved after Daddy rolled out of bed, came back with a wet washcloth, and then disappeared for good, his skin was spotless. No matter where Billy patted his lower back and even his bottom, everything was clean and dry. Maybe he imagined it all. Maybe it was a dream. When he snuck out of Daddy’s room to slip into his own to dress for the day, he heard Daddy’s happy humming all the way from the kitchen. Over Mr Coffee bubbling and gurgling. Daddy is still happy right now, frying eggs for himself. He would have made some for Billy, too, but Billy declined. He’s not even going to eat this cereal, truth be told.

Plate and fork in hand, Daddy leans against the kitchen counter when he says, “There’s a baseball game on tonight. Some of my buddies from work are coming over to watch it.”

Billy picks his head up to give Daddy his attention. He reads the pause for what it is.

“Do you wanna sit out here with us?”

Daddy always gives him that choice. Of sitting with his loud friends while they drink and smoke and yell at the most boring sport Billy has ever seen on TV. He just does not see the appeal. Maybe it’s a grown-up thing. But Billy also knows that if he won’t sit with the men and behave himself that his only other option is to be in his room with the door shut. He is to stay out of Daddy’s way, out of his friends’ ways, and keep out of sight. Daddy’s friends have seen him before. Billy made an honest attempt the first time Daddy asked him if he wanted to watch a game with them. Because surely it was better than sitting alone in his room, wishing Daddy’s friends would hurry up and leave so they could reclaim the couch and watch something together. That’s the only time Billy doesn’t sit in his daddy’s lap: when there’s company over. It doesn’t feel right. So for Billy, it’s a double loss.

Shaking his head, Billy says, “No thank you. I have my spelling review due tomorrow before the test on Friday.”

His daddy’s chest puffs up at that. Prideful that Billy handles himself, doesn’t need Daddy to remind him of school work. 

Nodding and glancing at his watch, Daddy says, “Speaking of school, you need to get a move on.”

Billy is at the sink with his dishes in an instant. They’ll be his to clean when he gets home. Like with Mommy, Billy beats Daddy home because of his job. Billy uses that hour-or-so window to do dishes and his chores. It’s worth it to just stay on top of them rather than have Daddy scold him. Daddy will do worse than take Billy’s Walkman away or put him in a corner until his nose leaves an oily patch on the paint. More than a year has passed since Billy’s accident in the truck and the first belting Daddy ever gave him. Daddy has only belted him one other time. The only temper tantrum Billy has ever thrown here. He knows better, now. Just do as Daddy says and the belt stays in the loops of Daddy’s pants. He’s wearing it right now, buckle scuffed from age and handling. Billy stares at it even when Daddy’s hands cup his jaw and lift his chin up.

“Give your Daddy a kiss before you go, angel. I miss you when I’m at work.”

Billy nods even as Daddy’s hands scoop him under his arm to lift him. On instinct, Billy’s thighs clamp to his daddy’s hips while he leans forward in strong arms for the kiss. He doesn’t kiss Mommy on the mouth anymore, too embarrassed to do it. Kissing Daddy on the lips makes him think about the few girls at school who have tried to do this to him. He’s avoided it every time, yanking himself away and yelling loud enough for everyone to hear how a girl tried to give him cooties. He’s in fifth grade, not above humiliating someone for his own sake. He’s no better than the kids who say mean things about his ears or how long his hair is. Probably none of them kiss their daddies on the lips, though. Longer than it should be, but if Billy pulls away, Daddy just makes him do it again. So Daddy is always the one to break their kiss.

“Off with you, now,” he murmurs still with their faces close.

Billy’s boast over a year ago that school is easy, no challenge at all, still holds true today. Where some of his classmates struggle to point out a verb in a sentence or list five adjectives that aren’t colors, Billy recites it all. He has the next five chapters in their spelling workbook filled out already, the next two in their math book. It leaves his mind with time to wander far beyond the school. He wanders to the beach, mostly, smells the salt and spray so clearly that he’s almost there. Almost shivers from waves lapping at his ankles and toes. 

He thinks about the last time Mommy had taken him surfing. His surfboard is in the shed at the house. Unused. She doesn’t have time for it, and Daddy isn’t interested in it. It’s one of the few things that brings him sadness and leeches the smile off his face. Not even Daddy being so touchy with him makes him feel this bad. Because not surfing anymore just makes him think about how he’s growing apart from Mommy. He doesn’t want to sit and watch  _ Magnum, P.I. _ with her anymore. If she asks him to come grocery shopping with her, he declines. He doesn’t sing along to her music anymore, usually has his Walkman turned up as loud as it will go while he keeps to himself on his bed. Billy doesn’t know when that started happening, but now that he sees the gap between them, he doesn’t know how to stop it. How to slow it. How to fix it.

Things keep changing in his life at school, too. In September, he will be in sixth grade. His first year at middle school. So not only will it be all the kids in the fifth grade here—his class of 20 kids and the other three classrooms—but other kids from elementaries nearby. New kids, a lot of new kids. It’s like kindergarten all over again, only this time he won’t cry when Mommy leaves him.

Apparently, six grade is a lot different. Dropping in on conversations, he has heard tales of kids changing classrooms for each subject. And having lockers in the hallway instead of their classroom. So he’ll have to juggle what sounds like seven or eight classes all with only a few minutes to maybe run from one room to the next? Whatever ‘detention’ is doesn’t sound fun, either. Having to stay an hour or more after school because he got in trouble. He could never hide that from his parents, and both of them being disappointed in him at the same time is a fear too deep for him to confront. The fifth graders have a standardized text coming up, too, so Billy gets to sweat over that as well. He has too much riding on behaving himself and keeping his grades perfect. He doesn’t have time for passing notes or girls laughing at him. Not that he wants any of that from girls.

That’s… another thing he’s dealing with. On top of the slow falling out with Mommy, dealing with the weirdness from Daddy, and school, Billy has to keep his eyes down. Because even as the boys in his class stop pulling pigtails and accusing the girls of having cooties, Billy finds his interest in them hasn’t changed. He’s not made the switch from disgusted disinterest to curiosity. And the way he wishes the other boys would include him in their games of tag or pick him on a team at recess? He’s beginning to think he’ll never make that change.

Maybe Daddy has something to do with it? The strange things they do together? Maybe that’s why he only wants to escape a girl trying to hold his hand. They’re just boring and dumb to him. Watching his boy classmates fall over each other in a friendly scuffle on the playground, though? That’s what he wants. He gets it so rarely now, living away from Mrs Alvarez and her collection of grandkids. The older boys have no interest in playing with them, now. Too focused on how to steal cigarettes from someone and look cool, slick their hair back and look as big in their shirts as possible. They ooze something Billy doesn’t understand. Something almost like Daddy, but not quite. An in-between stage from boy to man. It’s scary but exciting all at the same time, and he can’t wait for his turn. To not be a kid anymore. To have people respect him.

It’s enough to keep his mind busy during school and the casual march back to Daddy’s apartment. It takes his mind off the dishes waiting for him in the sink. The trash that needs taking out. Daddy doesn’t have him on laundry duty only because Daddy doesn’t want him in the building’s laundry room alone. The neighborhood around them isn’t the greatest, and Daddy has… words for people he doesn’t like. Words Billy will never repeat, knows they are wrong and flinches every time Daddy says them. Billy won’t think like that. Men don’t cry, Daddy has taught him that, but he’ll always keep the softness his Mommy gave him. To treat people kindly even if he doesn’t like them.

Billy keeps his headphones off until the front door opens and shuts. He needs to hear when Daddy comes home so he can pop his head out of his room and say hi. Manners are important to Daddy, and poor ones are the easiest thing to set off his temper. So as Daddy sets his keys down and abandons his lunch box in the kitchen, Billy offers him a smile on his way to his bedroom. To shuck his sweaty, greasy work clothes and hop in the shower. Daddy always showers first thing when he gets home.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Work shirt slipping off his arms to reveal his white undershirt, Daddy angles a tired smile right back at him.

“Hi, angel. Get started on your spelling review yet? I need to check it for you when you’re done.”

Daddy doesn’t need to know how far ahead Billy is in his school work. He may be proud at first, but he’ll wonder what Billy is getting up to in his free time. Little boys can’t be trusted, or so Daddy says. 

“I’ll have it done tonight. Promise.”

“Mmm okay,” Daddy drawls, fingers flicking at his belt and opening his work pants. They slide down his legs, underwear following. Billy averts his eyes. “I’m trusting you when you say that, Billy. If it hits your bedtime and you’re still working on it, you’ll be up until it’s done. Understand?”

A nod.

“Yes, sir.”

Daddy is naked and smells like engine oil when he smiles, says, “That’s my boy. I’ll get dinner started once I’m out of the shower.”

It’s not a long wait. Billy’s baths take longer than Daddy’s showers. And that’s only because Daddy takes his time washing every inch of Billy. Of course Billy remembers the first time, although it’s fuzzy at the edges already. He no longer flinches when Daddy pets between his legs, no longer leans away when fingers slip between his cheeks. Billy even manages to meet Daddy’s eyes during the process and return the smile given to him. It’s a proud smile. Proud of him for being quiet and calm, for being a good boy. Daddy would never hurt him, loves him. And still Billy trusts that love. 

He has to trust that love extra when he’s alone in his room, the living room loud with the bellows of men. Because he wants to lounge on the couch while doing his homework. So he can be near Daddy and lean into the occasional caress from those big hands. Sometimes if Billy’s only homework is to read, Daddy will stretch them out on the couch, his chest to Billy’s back, and hold Billy while he reads. It’s like when they sleep, Daddy’s hand covering his navel, petting him sometimes. Billy squirms and giggles when Daddy slips his hand under his shirt to pet his skin, complains that it tickles. Daddy always stops eventually, kisses the back of his head, and returns his attention to the TV turned low. Turned low for Billy so he can hear himself think as he reads.

That’s not his fate tonight, and all his worrying and thinking at school make him long for closeness. He finds he wants his parents to tell him everything will be okay, that he’ll have fun in sixth grade, that he won’t get detentions, that they’ll still love him even as he grows up and… apart from them. It’s already happening with Mommy. How long until he declines offers of adventure from Daddy? How long until Daddy singing to him doesn’t make him smile? Sick with himself, Billy pushes his book away and just curls up on his bed. He hasn’t slept in this bed for weeks, always joins Daddy in his. So to drag himself to the closet and pull on pajamas, turn out the light, and have to cuddle a pillow makes him more miserable. 

The baseball game has long since ended when Billy stirs awake. The stencil numbers of his alarm clock tell him just how late it is: 11:42. Way past his bedtime, but as he lies there and the seconds tick on, sleep evades him. He’s just not used to sleeping alone when he’s here. The bed is missing the warmth and weight of someone holding him and cuddling him all night long. He misses a big hand on him keeping him still and close, and sort of holding himself is stupid and doesn’t work. Maybe Daddy won’t mind him sneaking into bed with him? Surely not. Billy is honestly surprised he’d awoken in his bed, that Daddy didn’t come in here and just move him.

When Billy cracks his bedroom door open, the living room light is still on. The TV is on, too. From the crack of his door, Billy gets an eyeful of what is keeping Daddy awake.

Without sisters and the women in his life taking care to avoid him seeing them naked, Billy has never seen a girl before. Not like this, not like what’s on TV. A pale, tiny girl in the lap of a man, her legs spread wide and exposing her. Shyly, he makes sense of it in his head. What the girl and the man behind her are doing. Someone from the counselor’s office had come into their classroom and split up the boys and girls, told them about babies and how they come to be. It didn’t make sense at the time, and Billy was too lost in his daydream of the week to pay much attention. Still, he understands the purpose of what they’re doing on TV. Just not the context. That curiosity coaxes him out of his room to stand beside the couch. Glancing to Daddy sitting there only confuses him more, not understanding at all what his daddy is doing.

Daddy hasn’t noticed him standing there yet. Mostly because Daddy’s head is tipped back against the cushion of the couch, eyes closed. He hums quiet and low in his throat, murmurs ‘angel’ while he touches himself. It’s something Billy has felt pressed against him while sleeping. In the morning when Daddy acts funny, holds him tightly before eventually gasping in his ear. Billy thinks maybe he knows now what it is that splashes on his skin just before Daddy winds down and gets out of bed. It’s the wetness shining at the… tip of his daddy’s penis. He draws his thumb over it to spread it around, making the friction of skin loud and messy sounding.

His face heats up something awful to look between his dad’s legs and watch. Daddy is still fully dressed in the jeans and t-shirt he’d thrown on after his shower. But the zip and button are wide open, shoved down enough to expose himself through the slit in his briefs. It’s all Billy can see, just the long, ruddy length of him as his fist travels up and down. Squeezing. Sometimes faster, only to slow down. All while he sighs and bites back noises. Hot in his face and tingly with nerves, Billy forces his eyes away from what he doesn’t understand and stares instead at his dad’s face. It’s confusing and scares him. Will his dad be mad at him for snooping? Billy hopes not.

So quiet, so small, Billy mumbles, “Daddy?”

The people on TV keep moving, their voices and sounds muted. Daddy startles and rips his hand away from himself, sitting up fast enough to wince. They look down as one at the remote left perched on the cushion beside Daddy. Billy almost flinches away when Daddy slaps at the remote and flicks it in the direction of the TV. On screen, the girl’s body pauses just as the man behind her is about to…

“Answer me, son.”

Billy does startle, now, and rips his eyes away from the TV. So much pink.

“I-I’m sorry?”

Daddy’s face is stern, thundercloud brewing above his brow.

“I asked you why you were out of bed past your bedtime. I want an answer, Billy.”

Heart in his throat, Billy tries to keep his eyes on Daddy’s. But he can’t look away from the frozen image on the screen for too long. He is wound up and so nervous that his gaze darts right back to it no matter how hard he tries not to. So he stands there, hands fisted at his sides and shaking from fear. That Daddy will be upset with him and belt him for getting out of bed. Nevermind what he’d been doing and watching.

Daddy’s storm clouds dissipate the longer Billy stands there staring at him and shaking all over. Trying to be brave, but not enough to speak. Daddy frowns at him for a second, glances to the TV, and then regards Billy with softness. Just enough to unwind the poor boy.

“Come here, angel. Come tell your daddy what woke you up.”

In the mad scramble right at the beginning, Daddy could only tuck himself back into his jeans. They still lie unzipped against his flat belly. So Billy can still see almost everything. But… it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. It’s just Daddy. So Billy staggers forward a step and another until he weaves around the end of the couch and reaches up for his dad. Daddy holds him steady while dropping back to the center couch cushion. Once he’s down, he scoops Billy under his knees and holds him close, sitting sidesaddle. That still leaves the side of Billy’s rear resting flush with his Daddy. It’s just like when they go to sleep at night. A vague weight.

“Angel, I’m waiting.”

Traitorous, Billy glances at the TV before whipping his head back around. He tips his chin up to meet Daddy’s challenging stare. Billy isn’t one to back down from a challenge.

“I woke up because I was alone, and you weren’t next to me, so I came out here to find you.”

Daddy hums and softens his stare, even softens the line of his lips.

“I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet.” Blue eyes just like his lift to the screen, look for a few seconds, and then regard Billy again. “I wanted a little bit of time to myself.”

Okay? What is that supposed to mean?

“I don’t understand…”

Daddy has both arms around him, holding him loosely. One hand slips free to drift up and pet hair out of his eyes. He wants to grow it out long, like that Rob Lowe guy. He’s cool, and Mommy likes him so. Daddy makes comments about his hair being long like a girl. But then in the same breath will pet and play with his curls like it’s nothing. So. What is the truth? Billy doesn’t think about that as power in Daddy’s fingers nudging his head around turns his head for him so he’s looking at the TV.

“I was watching this to make me feel good. Do you know what this is, baby boy?”

Daddy allows him the wiggle room to shake his head but not enough for Billy to look away. If he wants to stop seeing the girl’s pink body poised above something that looks entirely too big to be connected to a person, well… He’d have to close his eyes. And he can’t do that either.

“N-no, sir.” Billy almost forgets the ‘sir’ but saves it. “I don’t-what does that mean? Why does it make you feel… good?”

He’s too curious for his own good. Too curious to just keep quiet and answer Daddy’s questions. So Billy quickly bites his tongue to stop his curiosity and waits for Daddy to scold him. Daddy’s hand drops out of his hair, and Billy flinches from the loss. It’s only so that Daddy can take him by the hips and shift him around. Now, Billy faces the TV. He sits with his legs splayed, Daddy shuffling under him until his legs push Billy’s all the way open. Not unlike the girl, although she’s on her knees. It looks uncomfortable, like falling on his knees during Gym.

Daddy’s hum tickles all along Billy’s ears when he murmurs, “It makes me feel good in a sexual way. Like what they’re feeling.” Daddy flicks a hand away from Billy’s thighs to the TV. It just as quickly reclaims its spot. “They’re having sex. Did they teach you about sex in school yet?”

Billy nods, but says instead, “I didn’t understand it, it was confusing.”

“Mmm, I see. Figures the school would mess that up,” Daddy scoffs. He squeezes Billy’s thighs and then shifts his hold on them. Thick fingers curling over the insides of Billy’s thighs, Daddy hikes them that much wider. Wider that Billy had thought they could go. “Oh well, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. I’ll tell you what’s happening, angel, so you can understand.”

A pause.

“Yes, sir.”

“Relax, son, you’re not in trouble. You told Daddy the truth, and I’m very proud of you.”

Billy nods and does as he’s told despite his heart racing in his chest. Can Daddy feel it through his body? Billy tries to see if he can feel Daddy’s, but he cannot tune out the thump of his. So he gives up and just tries to melt into his daddy’s arms. His hands are still gentle where they rest on Billy’s thighs, squeezing him sometimes. It almost tickles.

“That’s very good, angel, thank you. Now, are you looking at the screen? I need you to pay attention.”

Billy nods, his voice too tight in his throat to speak.

Daddy peels a hand away from Billy’s thigh to scoop up the remote. A chill seeps into Billy’s leg where that hand had just been. Teeth chewing the inside of his cheek, Billy keeps his eyes on the frozen image. It unnerves him and makes his face hot, but he does it.

In his ear, Daddy asks, “Do you know what you’re looking at?”

Yes and no…

“A little?” He confesses with shoulders hunched, staring at the man’s penis through his embarrassment. “I know what we have.”

“And what do we have?”

The heat in Billy’s face overflows into his ears. 

“Daddy…”

Daddy taps his thigh with the remote. Almost hard enough to sting through his pajamas.

“Answer me, son. If the school won’t teach you, I will. What do we have?”

His mouth screws up, but he manages without a giggle, “Penises.”

“Exactly. What about girls? What do they have?”

“I don’t remember. At school we didn’t talk about girls.”

Daddy’s hands slide just a bit higher up his thighs. That almost tickles, too.

“Well, as you can see, girls don’t have penises. They have vaginas. Do you know how two people make a baby?”

That much he remembers, now has the words to say it. Even if he wants to laugh, he knows he has to say it.

“They told us that part. The man sticks his… penis in her vagina, and they make a baby.”

There had been a lot more to it than that. A whole ten-minute video. It was awful and some of his classmates started crying. Billy had just tuned it all out and stared outside. 

Eyes still trained on the screen, Billy startles when the image moves. Daddy must have pressed play, and Billy’s heart jumps back into high gear as he watches. Behind and a little below, the man grabs himself like Daddy had and angles himself towards the girl. He should know what comes next, he said it literally seconds ago. Still, he jumps in Daddy’s lap when the man shoves them together and then disappears inside her. The girl doesn’t stop shaking until there’s nothing left. She’s in his lap, his hands draped from behind her and gripping her thighs. Holding her open for the camera.

Billy almost startles again when Daddy says in his ear, “That’s very good, angel. It feels good to do that to a woman.” They watch on TV as the man grabs her by the hips and starts moving her. Up and down, up and down. The whole screen is full of watching slick flesh slide in and out of her. “See? She likes it, too. They’re making each other feel good.”

Body tight and uncomfortable like he’s told a lie, Billy just nods his head. He wants to squirm, wants to pop out of Daddy’s lap and just go back to bed. Beyond how different she looks, the girl holds no interest in him. He still doesn’t understand exactly what he’s looking at, just thinks he shouldn’t be looking at it. But he can’t stop himself, eyes glued to where she’s impaled. Sometimes hard and fast and sometimes with a roll of the man’s hips under her. Below, Daddy’s hands give him another squeeze to call him back from falling to the sights. Daddy even does him the favor of rewinding the tape, the VCR squeaking, and then pauses around the same place as the first time. The man holds her above his penis, about to push inside her again.

“People have sex more than just to make babies, Billy. That’s not what these two are doing. They’re doing it because it feels good.”

“And… and that’s what you were doing?”

“Well, there’s no one here but you, so not quite. We can touch ourselves to feel good, too, if we’re alone. I can show you, if you ask Daddy nicely.”

That’s the part he understands the least, so he nods, almost forgets to ask.

“Please show me, Daddy? It looked like it hurt, so I don’t understand.”

Daddy’s hands lift off from Billy’s thighs only to tug on his pajamas—both parts at the same time.

“Stand up and take your pajamas off, angel.”

Daddy helps him stand, but once Billy is on his bare feet, he’s on his own. Back to Daddy, Billy plucks at the buttons on his shirt and slips it off. He knows better than to throw it on the floor, so he folds it and sets it down. His pajama bottoms follow, and then his underwear on top of the pile completes it. When he turns around, naked and shivering from the slight chill, Daddy has pulled himself back out of his jeans. He doesn’t stand up anymore, looks like when he undresses for bed. Billy is used to the sight, and so it does not hold his attention. The TV though…

Daddy chuckles so rich and warm when he scoops Billy back up. He manhandles the boy into the same position as before. Only now Daddy is careful about where Billy’s weight settles in his lap. Skin brushes Billy’s bottom, and he jolts in Daddy’s hands. Daddy just hums in his ear and holds him still until Billy grows used to the press of skin to his rear. Like this, Daddy slouches down the couch a little and hooks his chin over Billy’s shoulder. It’s nice and warm with Daddy’s clothes rubbing against him, one of Daddy’s arms around him. The other, the right, wiggles between Billy’s thigh and his own. Billy’s eyes are trained down as he watches Daddy wrap his hand around himself. The reach is awkward, so Billy tries to keep the weight of his right leg off his daddy’s arm.

“This is how a man makes himself feel good when he’s alone.” Daddy’s hand is wrapped around his penis when he gives it a shake. Billy almost giggles. “Are you watching, angel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what you see.”

Billy bites over a smile, embarrassed to say the word out loud again.

“You’re holding your penis in your hand.”

The arm around him gives him a squeeze.

“That’s very good, baby boy. It feels good to move my hand, too. Just up and down like this, keeping an even rhythm.”

Daddy’s breaths are loud in his ear, petting over his bare neck as Daddy does just that. It still looks painful, more so when the tip starts leaking again. Like before Billy had interrupted. The TV is still paused with the girl held frozen at the moment just before penetration. Billy glances down, too curious and too wound up for his own good, and finds the remote. He reaches for it and snatches it up. Daddy doesn’t slow his hand, doesn’t stop Billy from mashing a finger into the Play button. Daddy’s lips are back at Billy’s ear to explain what they’re doing.

“See how he moves her like that? It feels much better than what I’m doing. She’s a lot smaller than him, so she’s very tight around him. Look at how she shakes. That’s how you can tell he’s making her feel good. He feels good inside her.”

A blink, and then Billy’s focus drops to Daddy’s hand. It’s faster, now, and the tip is darker than before. It looks like it hurts even more now. Daddy breathes hard like he had this morning, and Billy tenses up just the same.

“Angel, do you want to watch the rest? See what happens when he’s done with her?”

Billy has no idea what that means, but he nods anyway. Daddy’s arm around him uncurls long enough to take the remote from Billy and set it back on the couch. It’s back around him in a flash, holding him up a little to make his reach easier. Billy lifts his legs higher, out of the way, and his reward is a deep groan in his ear. He can’t decide where to look: Daddy’s penis or what’s happening on screen. Daddy makes that decision for him with a hissed command in his ear.

“Watch them, look now.”

Billy swallows hard as the screen fills with the obscene close-up. The man slams into the girl one more time and then holds himself deep inside her. He twitches where he’s buried, seems to stay there forever. The camera doesn’t move to show anything else, and the tape is still muted. So it forces Billy to stare at the poor girl exposed and wet between her legs until the man pulls out. Barely a second or two goes by before something white drips out of her. Billy jumps in his daddy’s lap when fingers peek into the shot, scoop up whatever the white stuff is, and then pushes it back inside her. It looks gross, probably feels gross, and Billy makes a face. Pinched and uncomfortable.

“Why did he do that? What came out of her, Daddy?”

Below and nearly between Billy’s thighs, Daddy’s hand slows down. He stops, then, and just holds himself. Billy’s attention is there to watch Daddy swipe more clear stuff from the tip. It’s coming out where pee does, and Billy frowns all the harder. He doesn’t understand this at all.

Daddy adjusts the confused boy in his lap and sighs in his pink ear, “That’s his semen, angel. That’s what a man gives to a woman to make a baby. That’s how me and your mother made you.”

“Ewww,” Billy whines, drawn out. “Daddy, that’s gross! Why did you say that!”

Daddy just chuckles in his ear and kisses the heat in the cartilage. 

“It’s true, baby boy! That’s how every life starts, just like that.” He sighs and then ducks his head to kiss just behind Billy’s ear. “It felt good and I got my little angel out of it. Sex is good, Billy, it’s not gross or bad. It’s been a long time since I had sex with someone, so I make myself feel good instead.”

Daddy’s voice drags through a groan. It doesn’t sound as happy as the others. Billy glances down again, is sure that Daddy is hurt. His penis is darker now, stands up when Daddy lets it go. It must hurt. He has to know.

“Does it hurt, Daddy? It looks like it hurts a lot.”

Chin still hooked over Billy’s shoulder, Daddy glances down with his boy.

“Are you asking if Daddy’s penis hurts?”

A tiny nod, turning shy with the word murmured directly in his ear.

Daddy takes time to press a kiss to the side of Billy’s head and then breathe him in. Daddy’s arm is tight around him when he next speaks. Billy hears and feels the words.

“It hurts very much, angel. You being here makes it hurt less, though.”

Billy frowns at that, doesn’t see the connection.

“Really?” He casts a glance up at his daddy, meets blue eyes already watching him. “How? I’m not touching your penis.”

“Mmm, you’re not, but that would make it feel even better.” Daddy holds him tight and bows down to kiss Billy’s cheek. Lips at his ear once more, his dad asks, “Will you do your daddy a favor, angel? Will you help make me feel good?”

Billy cannot help his uneasy glance at the tape. It’s ended now and just plays muted static. But he recalls the girl’s body bouncing in the man’s lap and… he doesn’t have a vagina. They can’t do that. So what does Daddy want him to do?

“But Daddy, I’m not a girl. I don’t have a vagina.”

Daddy laughs in his hair and kisses him, holds him tightly as they sway a little on the couch.

“You’re so silly, angel. I know that.” He chuckles deeper in his throat this time and curls forward to get at Billy’s cheek again. Daddy’s lips find it with extra heat simmering under the skin. Embarrassed. “Men can still have sex with you, but you should never let them touch you like that. Only faggots do that, Billy. You’re not a faggot.”

It’s one of Daddy’s words for people he doesn’t like. So Daddy saying it twice so directly in his ear rips a flinch out of Billy each time. He shakes his head at the heels of his daddy’s words. 

“I-I won’t, I don’t know how, but—”

The words die on his tongue, lips still parted around the next word, when Daddy touches him. The hand that had wrapped around his penis holds him by his rear to pet fingers between his cheeks. Daddy brushes over that soft spot, barely pressing down. Billy twitches against those fingers, not meaning to but unable to control it.

“Here. Never let a man touch you here, Billy. If you do, he’ll turn you into a faggot. Understand?”

Nevermind Daddy is touching him there, now, pets him enough to chase the weirdness away. Billy nods all the same and sags in his daddy’s lap when that hand slips away. The phantom press of fingers remains, though, and Billy shakes when Daddy sits them up some.

“You can help Daddy in a different way, though. It won’t hurt, and I promise you’ll like it. You’ll make Daddy feel so good. You wanna make Daddy feel good, don’t you angel?”

He’s nodding without listening to the words very much. He can’t see Daddy’s penis between his legs anymore. Without Daddy touching it, it doesn’t stand up anymore. Daddy shifts under him anyway, sitting them up all the way. He holds Billy by the waist while reaching for the side table on the left. It’s an awkward reach since Daddy isn’t left handed. Like Billy. But he slaps for the little drawer in the table, yanks it open, and then takes something out. It’s a tube of something. Daddy flips it around and flicks the cap open too fast for Billy to read the label. 

“Lean back, Billy, and I’ll get you ready. You gonna listen and be a good boy?”

“Yes, sir,” he whispers, almost too nervous to reply at all.

“That’s my boy. Keep your legs open like that when I put this on you. It’ll make it easier.”

Whatever ‘it’ is, Billy doesn’t like how cold it is. He jumps but keeps quiet. Daddy’s chin is over his shoulder again to watch the progress. His right hand spreads clear slick stuff on Billy’s inner thighs and down by his cheeks. Not between them, though, which is why Billy doesn’t tense up and shy away. When Daddy is done with that, his hand moves to his penis once again and starts to stroke like before. Up and down, but with swiftness. Daddy stands up all on his own again in no time. Humming in Billy’s ear, Daddy takes a moment to just breathe and hold Billy by the thighs again. His right hand is sort of sticky. And warm from friction.

“Okay angel,” Daddy nearly growls in his ear. “Daddy is gonna position your legs exactly how he wants them. Don’t move, and keep your legs held tightly together. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Daddy reaches over Billy’s thighs this time to sort of hold his penis straight up from above.

“Closer your legs and squeeze Daddy’s penis between them. As tightly as you can.”

Not a single bubble of a giggle rises in Billy when his daddy says that word. He’s too focused on doing as he’s told. Billy digs his hands into the backrest of the couch. Anything to hold on while Daddy grabs him by the hips and shuffles under him. Like this… Billy’s breath freezes in his throat. Because like this, when he looks just under his little penis, Daddy’s pushes through his thighs. It makes him shiver to feel it along his inner thighs. They’re normally ticklish, but right now it makes all the peach fuzz stand up on him until it stings. He can’t look anywhere else but at the dark tip of Daddy’s penis peeking through.

Breaths heavy and loud in Billy’s ear, Daddy pants, “Oh angel, just like that. Keep your legs tight for Daddy. You mmm you wanna make me feel good, don’t you?”

Daddy shifts harder under him, popping Billy up in his lap. His, “Yes, sir,” comes out in two bucks even.

“Good boy,” purrs in his ear.

Daddy’s hands at his hips help to keep Billy still. His legs are starting to shake from the effort to keep them sealed shut. It’s almost burning between his thighs, how quickly Daddy’s penis slides up and down. An even rhythm just like his hand, just like he’d shown. Billy traps a whine in his throat, scared he’ll mess this up for his daddy. He wants to be good, he does! So Billy tenses up all over to squeeze Daddy that much harder. A shout in his ear. Two more snaps of Daddy’s hips under him. Pretty blues fly open wide as they catch the first rope of something white shoot out of Daddy’s penis. It must be the same thing that came out of that girl. Daddy’s semen.

It spatters Billy’s thighs and even drips a little on his penis, too. It doesn’t stand up like Daddy’s, never has. It’s something Billy had wondered about before tuning out the counselor talking about sex and babies. She called it an erection. Now the word floats to the top of his mind as he watches Daddy slow down between his thighs. He stops all together after one more slow thrust up. Billy squeezes it all out of him, and then Daddy collapses under him. Billy’s inner thighs sort of buzz like after a swipe or two from Daddy’s palm on his bottom. The playful swipes. But he made Daddy feel good, so the irritation doesn’t bother him. He was a good boy for Daddy. That’s all that matters to Billy.

Shifting Billy on top of him with a deep inhale, Daddy groans, “I love you, angel. That was very nice what you did for Daddy just now. You made me so happy, baby boy.”

The last, bitter wisps of Billy’s fear snuff out. Fear that Daddy would be upset with him, fear that he would disappoint Daddy again. All of it goes away when Daddy presses shaky kisses to his neck. That feels good like Daddy petting his hair. So Billy cranes his head the other way, in case Daddy will kiss him more. Daddy pauses for a breath, maybe looks at him with his head turned. The kisses start up again. This time, though, there’s a little bit of suction at the end. It makes Billy squirm and almost fuss at the wet noise in his ear. Daddy stops when his lips brush blushing cartilage.

Billy does turn his cheek back so that Daddy will kiss him there. He smiles and giggles into the kiss, fighting to get through, “I love you too, Daddy.”

Ticklish once more, though, Billy has no defense against thick fingers that dance up and down his ribs. Daddy is strong enough to sit up and wrap his arms around Billy, carrying him towards the bathroom. They don’t have time for a bath. Daddy turning the shower on solves that problem, and he picks Billy up over the wall of the tub to step them into the spray. Daddy doesn’t linger on him while washing. It’s nothing like the baths he gives Billy, taking his time washing Billy from head to toe. More so between his legs. Where he now knows Daddy touches to make himself feel good. Billy wonders when he’ll be like that. It’s an inevitability, not a what-if. He’s nearly half asleep on his feet, though, so he doesn’t dwell on it. Daddy skipping their hair expedites the whole process, and they’re in Daddy’s bed before Billy knows it.

“I won’t be calling you off from school tomorrow, Billy, so you best fall asleep on the double.” Daddy still holds him tightly from behind like normal, still kisses his nape. “You made me very happy tonight, and I love you.”

Billy is already complying with that command when he mumbles, “Love you too, Daddy.”

Another kiss to his neck. Suction again. Teeth.

“Sweet dreams, my little angel.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for forced feminization and humiliation

Billy is twelve when he meets Aunt Cheryl’s daughter Nikki for the first time. Nikki is not his cousin, because Aunt Cheryl isn’t actually related to him. Taller than him with hair she dies black and keeps short, she smacks her gum while chattering endlessly. She has recently graduated from high school. She lives with her father, doesn’t speak much to Cheryl. But today is Nikki’s birthday, so apparently it warrants a visit on this hot Friday in July. Billy isn’t sure how to feel about Nikki. Mostly because she is loud and says meaningless things, maybe just for the purpose of being loud. He feels even less sure about her when she finally spots him and starts cooing at him and petting his hair.

“Oh my god, is this Em’s little boy, Billy Goat?”

“My name is Billy,” he snaps. “You can’t call me that. Only my mom can.”

“Oh, little man has spice!” She grins at him. “Funny, until you said anything I thought you were a girl. You have pretty hair, little boy.”

Nikki keeps on eyeing him as he waits for Daddy to pick him up. She follows him into his room when he tries to escape her. It’s the room he still shares with his mom. He doesn’t mind, keeps the room cleaner than she does. He’d fallen into the habit years ago since Daddy expects his room clean and bed made at all times. So? Why not just bring the habit to his other home. He’s still split between his parents. Still two weeks with Mom and then two weeks with Daddy. They’re thinking about letting him choose who he wants to live with full time when he starts high school. At least that’s what Daddy says. Billy isn’t sure he wants that, doesn’t think he can pick just one. Even if him and Daddy are closer, now. Mom just has less and less time for him. He tries to understand and just spends nights over at Daddy’s even when it’s mom’s week to have him. If she’s not home, what’s the point?

“So do you ever wear your mom’s clothes? Like when no one is around?”

Billy scowls at Nikki flicking through mom’s closet. It’s mostly blouses she doesn’t wear, because the plant she and Cheryl work at have a uniform. And when mom isn’t at work, she’s here. She doesn’t go out anymore. Billy hasn’t surfed in two years. It’s almost easier for him this way. He doesn’t annoy Daddy with talking about the beach and wanting to surf. Because Daddy thinks surfers are shiftless and bums. Billy just tries to miss it less like missing Mom less. He’s drifting away from all that. It’s whatever.

“Why would I do that?” Billy sneers. “Do you think I’m some sort of faggot?”

Nikki’s friendliness cools significantly with her glare. It has the weight Billy wants but cannot yet muster. He’s an awful lot of edges for a twelve year old.

“Watch your mouth, you little shit, or I’ll pop you so hard.”

Billy scrambles back a step, realizes what he’s said. Where did that come from?

“I… I’m sorry, Nikki, I didn’t mean it.”

He must look so confused that she lets it go. She’s no longer all grins. But her voice is still playful between her smacking gum.

“It’s fine if you do wear your mom’s clothes, you know. It’s nobody’s business. Just don’t get caught.” She sits down at mom’s vanity next, picks up a few lipsticks before humming at one. “You know you can wear your mom’s colors. They’d look good on you too, so you don’t have to steal them from the drug store while you figure out your shade.” She glances to him in the mirror, sees his uncertainty. “C’mere, I’ll show you.”

He’s never thought about this. Never once looked at mom’s make-up and wanted to use it. Maybe play with it like crayons and fingerpaints when he was a little kid, sure. But to wear it? Like a girl?

Billy clenches his fists at his side, trying not to blush in shame when he snaps, “I’m a boy. Boys don’t wear make-up.”

Nikki scoffs at him once she’s done applying mom’s lipstick. She pops her lips and smiles at herself. When she’s done, she levels a bored look at Billy in the mirror.

“Don’t be so uptight. Boys can wear whatever they want. That must be your daddy talking, because I know Em didn’t raise you like that.”

The shame hits him again, just not as hard this time. Because she’s right. The more time he spends around Daddy, the closer Billy trips into repeating those words. Daddy’s words for people he doesn’t like. Hell, Billy had just used one. He doesn’t talk like that. He doesn’t use hurtful words like that. Mom would be disappointed in him spewing hate like that… He spit it out without thinking. It drops his heart into the deepest pit of him, truly ashamed, and he drags his feet to Nikki’s side.

“Come on, sit down,” she says gently, abandoning the chair. “I won’t tell anyone if you let me put lipstick on you. Okay? It’ll be our little secret.”

It could be fun. It must be for girls to wear it. Billy doesn’t see the appeal, but he’ll just make Nikki wipe it off if he doesn’t like it. There’s no way he’ll like it, so.

At first, Nikki holds him by the jaw while she draws the tip of the lipstick over his mouth. He flinches and frowns in her grasp, so she shakes his jaw to get him to quit. To cooperate. He’s used to that sort of handling. Daddy shakes him when he’s being stubborn about something. Mouthing off isn’t worth a belting, so Billy keeps his sass in check. He’d rather Daddy put a hand in his hair and pet him, speak softly to him, than treat him roughly. Because Daddy has an edge to him, and the older Billy gets, the more that edge is obvious. So before, where Billy may have hesitated to follow a command out of uncertainty, now he dismisses that instantly and just works on autopilot.

Nobody knows about what they do. After that first time, with Daddy on the couch, fist flying over his cock while sighing one of Billy’s pet names, it’s only gotten more. Daddy likes to fuck his thighs like that first time. And Billy has gotten better about holding them together. It’s easier when they’re in bed and Daddy just clamps his thighs together with his hands. Daddy is above him, then, and Billy watches his face the entire time. It’s either that or watch Daddy’s cock fuck through his thighs. That sight still captivates him sometimes. Daddy prefers it when Billy looks up at him. When Billy talks back.

“Feel good, angel? Tell Daddy it feels good.”

Of course it always feels good, even when it doesn’t, so Billy parrots right back, “It feels good, Daddy, I like it.”

He asks, now, while they’re on the couch. If Daddy will touch him, if they can make each other feel good. It still doesn’t do much for Billy. He’s too young, Daddy tells him. But soon enough he’ll start growing up. Literally, he’ll start getting taller and broader. Becoming a man. Watching the older Alvarez boys growing up, he’d marveled at how they changed seemingly over night. It’s his turn, now. Billy’s voice likes to crack and embarrass him, he gets painful spots on his face that he’s not supposed to pick at. He keeps blemishes under control all thanks to Mom. She buys him some sort of special soap he only uses on his face and shoulders, only for blemishes. He doesn’t bring it to Daddy’s, though, doesn’t want Daddy to think he’s soft like her. Like a girl.

Nikki turning his head to the mirror with his lips defined and red would certainly give Daddy ideas. Because when she plays with his hair and sort of makes a few curls fall over one of his eyes… Well…

“You would have been such a pretty girl,” Nikki boasts, gum ever present in her mouth. “Just the cutest little thing. Your mom would have to beat the guys off you with that baseball bat of yours.”

He’d joined Little League this summer. To make Daddy happy. He hates it, loathes every single second of it. The baseball field collects the San Diego heat and bakes them in their scratchy, stiff uniforms. Just like at school—sixth grade had been okay, he’ll be in seventh in September—he doesn’t exactly have a friend on the team. Worst of all, Daddy teases him when he gets hit with the ball, says it builds character and makes him stronger. Of course he doesn’t exactly feel strong cradling a shiner and trying not to cry, because Daddy will just shake him and call him a pussy for being scared of the ball. Which is just about the worst feeling in the world. Daddy’s disappointment and scorn. Billy didn’t know something could open a pit of despair in him and throw him down the bottomless well. So he plays Little League for Daddy and tries to be good at school and tries to be good at home and tries to keep him happy and— 

“Hey,” Nikki says softly, like he’s delicate. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes are wet, but they don’t overflow. He’s become a sort of master at holding tears back until he’s alone. Until it’s safe to let one or two out before scowling and gritting his teeth through the rest. Because men don’t cry. The older he gets, the less lenient Daddy is with stuff like this. Whining and throwing sass about, crying. So Billy sucks a harsh breath through his nose to dry his eyes, to shake the goosebumps off him. It’s fine. He’s fine. Everything is fine.

“I’m fine.”

He stares the lie in the mirror and imagines how differently everything would be. If he were a girl. Liking boys wouldn’t be a secret. It would be expected of him rather than one of his deepest secrets. He understands it, now. That he likes boys, wishes he could hold a boy’s hand in the hallway and pass him notes in class. It’s not something he’s proud of. Turning queer. Daddy had warned him about that. About men touching him in his pants and making a faggot out of him. Even though Daddy touches him there all the time, still bathes him even though Billy is twelve and plenty damn capable of doing it himself. He wishes that would stop. He wishes a lot of things would stop. Right now, he wishes his eyes would stop stinging, so he rubs at them with his forearm. When he looks up, Daddy is in the open door of the bedroom. Staring at Billy in the mirror with some awful, unreadable expression.

He clears his throat, and Nikki jumps to her feet. Billy stays right where he is, red mouth an admission of guilt. Every piece of him is frozen to the spot as he stares and stares at blue eyes watching him. The same as his—but stormy right now, thunderclouds brewing. Billy tenses in front of Mom’s vanity to bottle the fear in him. Daddy hates queers. Billy can’t get more queer than with lipstick painted on him.

Daddy barely even acknowledges Nikki chattering away at him. He regards Billy one more time, murmurs, “Let’s get a move on, son,” and then marches from the house.

He never comes inside when Mom is home. He usually beats her here on Fridays to drive Billy home with him, even though the walk isn’t that far. Something about keeping Billy safe from the ‘thugs’ in the neighborhood. Which mostly means people Billy considers friends, but Billy keeps his mouth shut. Just let the hate flow into one ear and then out the other. Don’t let it touch him. Don’t let it settle inside him and fester. He’s not hateful like that. Nikki is right—Mom didn’t raise him like that.

The brief drive back is quiet. Usually, Billy would be going a mile a minute about school or whatever book he’s reading or what their plans are for the weekend. Not this time. Because he’d scrambled to follow Daddy back to the truck and forgot to wipe the lipstick off. So now he sits in the passenger seat, on trial, and waits for Daddy’s final judgment. Ten, a hundred, countless excuses jump into his mouth. They were just playing around, it didn’t mean anything, Nikki made him do it. Something. Anything but the truth, which is that Nikki had told him to sit down, said he looked pretty, and just painted his lips. No resistance. He didn’t even think to tell her to stop. He just let her do it. And now he’s caught red handed. Doing girl stuff. Being a faggot. 

Daddy will surely belt him until he can’t stand. He hasn’t been belted in years. The sting, the lingering heat, the bright slap of leather hitting his flesh… It’s all a distant memory, the trauma of it pushing it even further away from his mind. Billy trembles so hard his knees almost buckle when he slides out of the truck. Daddy gestures for him to walk first, handing Billy his keys so he can unlock the front door. Daddy towering above him, behind him makes him sick, makes him want to drop to his knees and beg for leniency right here in the parking lot. That would only cause more trouble. Dawdling with the key in the lock will only cause more trouble. So despite the relative safety of an audience, of Daddy’s neighbors, Billy twists the lock on his fate, steps into the apartment, and stares into the kitchen when Daddy shuts the door behind them. The snap of the lock back in place is a tomb door sealing shut on him.

“Angel.”

It can’t be all bad. Daddy never calls him that when Billy is in trouble. Still, Billy does not turn around.

“Yes, sir?”

Daddy takes the two steps that separate them until he is flush heat to Billy’s back. His hands drift up next and cup the shelf of Billy’s shoulders. They’re not broad, yet, but if he turns out anything like Daddy, they will be. Under Daddy’s hands, though, he is even smaller than he actually is. To make himself smaller would invite weakness. So he stands with his back straight and chin up as Daddy squeezes his shoulders through his shirt.

“Would you mind telling me why you’re wearing your mother’s lipstick?” His hands tighten on Billy’s shoulders, fingers pinching against his delicate clavicle. “And don’t you lie to me, son. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Daddy always knows when he’s lying. So even though lies to save his skin crowd on his tongue. Billy swallows them. The truth will set him free.

“That girl Nikki, she said… I woulda been pretty as a girl. So she wanted to put Mom’s lipstick on me to see what I looked like.”

Daddy hums at that and relaxes his hands. They massage away the pain they’d caused. A reward for Billy’s honestly. It’s not over yet.

“Do you think that, angel? That you’re a pretty girl?”

Billy’s mind catches on the phrasing, quick as a whip, and he bites out just as hotly as before, “I’m a boy!”

Carefully, Daddy says, “That’s not what I asked you. Now answer my question.”

Billy recalls his face in the mirror. Scrappy boy with his hair growing out past his ears now. It’s thin in the middle as his curls sort of tangle at the ends. Mom calls it a mullet. Billy just likes it long, likes that something finally covers his big ears that stick out. It had been cute as a kid, but he never grew into them. They make him an easy target when he doesn’t need any more harassment from kids at school. But the color on his lips made his eyes brighter, made his face older somehow. People tell him he’s a handsome young man. So would he be a pretty girl?

Unbidden, hesitation makes him lie, makes him fib, “I-I don’t know.”

Daddy’s hands turn cruel at his shoulders when he warns, “Billy…”

What is he supposed to say?! He’s a boy, damn it, it doesn’t matter if he’d look pretty as a girl. It doesn’t matter! He could just scream, but he has to say something. Silence is the same as a refusal, which isn’t allowed. In these situations? Where Billy is in trouble no matter what? It’s best to just… agree with the lesser evil. If Billy denies the allegation, Daddy will just think he’s lying. So… 

Trying not to let his voice shake, Billy says softly, “Yes.”

“I didn’t hear that, angel. One more time.”

Billy knows what’s expected of him. Head held high, he admits, “Yes, sir, I’d be a pretty girl.”

It hurts more than a baseball thrown in his face. More than a fist jabbed in his belly. He wants to be sick, but he holds it all in. So long as he tells the truth, everything will be okay. Daddy won’t be mad or disappointed so long as Billy is honest. Sure enough, the iron grip at his shoulders lightens up. More so than before. Daddy pets him back and forth, rolling his thumbs into Billy’s upper back. The silence drags on until Billy relaxes. Everything will be okay. Whatever happens, it will be okay.

Behind him, Daddy’s body shifts as he kneels. Daddy’s words play with the shell of Billy’s ear when he murmurs, “Do you want to be a girl, angel? You could wear pretty dresses and make-up all the time.”

A shudder runs through Billy, finds its way out of him through a wild shake of his head.

“No, sir!”

Daddy’s hands slide away from Billy’s shoulders, under his arms, until his rough hands fondle Billy’s chest through his t-shirt. He’s flat, because he’s a boy, but that doesn’t stop Daddy from pinching and squeezing him.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Daddy warns with a tease. His smirk is so cruel on the shell of Billy’s blushing ear. His fingers are just as cruel as he pinches peachy-brown nipples through Billy’s shirt. “I agree, angel, you’d be a very pretty girl. Beautiful and soft all over.” His hands go back to fondling Billy’s chest instead of pinching him. “You’d be growing breasts right about now. They’d be tender all the time while you’re maturing. And here…” Daddy’s right hand slips down to cup him between his legs. Billy startles on his toes to get away, but Daddy’s hand is firm between his thighs. “My little angel with her little pussy. Yes, you’d be a pretty girl, sweetheart. Daddy’s little girl.”

It’s almost too much shame to bear. Billy’s ears are bright red under his hair, hatred and disgust pooling blood under the skin. He almost objects. Almost cries out that Daddy is wrong. He’s a boy! None of those things matter! Daddy doesn’t stop fondling him, though, so Billy just clings to a thick forearm while he squirms on his toes. At least Daddy isn’t yelling at him… It could always be worse.

A sigh tickles his ear, and then Daddy goes on, “Now that I’m thinking about it, I almost wish you were a girl, angel.” His hand slides deeper between Billy’s legs until his fingertips rub Billy’s hole through his clothes. “I’d love to hold you in my lap and put my fingers inside your pussy, feel how wet and tight you are. Would you be too little for Daddy’s cock?”

They do that, now. Sometimes while they’re lying on the couch or as they crawl into bed, Daddy will hold Billy to him and just… play with him. He doesn’t always reach for the lubricant in the nightstand, doesn’t always want to push his thumb inside Billy and just leave it there. Sometimes he just presses his fingers to Billy’s entrance and does nothing. Just the pressure of them. The most he’s taken is two fingers, and that was only after Daddy encouraged him to swallow more than a meger sip of beer. Daddy spread him out on their bed and kissed and bit and licked him all over while popping two fingers into him. It hurt and felt good at the same time. Anything bigger than that… they’ve not gone that far. Yet.

More and more the things they do together start to feel good rather than Billy feeling nothing at all or pain. And it’s like Daddy knows that, keeps touching him more and more all the time. It scares Billy, but to bring it up is even scarier. Daddy may take it wrong, may think he wants Daddy to stop. That’s what chills Billy most of all. Despite his fear, even right now, he’s not pushing Daddy away. Doesn’t fight it like he used to. Just… lets it happen. His heart races inside him from more than nerves. Excitement.

“Do you want that, angel? Do you want Daddy’s fingers in your pussy?”

Billy doesn’t have any other choice but to prop up his trembling voice and parrot back, “Please Daddy, I… I want your fingers in my pussy.”

The hands on him flatten and pull him flush against Daddy’s chest. It almost hurts, how tight Daddy’s hands are on him. But a prickly kiss to his neck ends it all, and Daddy nudges Billy deeper into the apartment. He turns around on instinct to gaze up at hooded eyes watching him. 

“Go take a shower so you’re nice and clean for me.” Daddy reaches for Billy’s chin and tilts it that much higher. “Try not to wash your lipstick off. Understand?”

A nod and, “Yes, sir.”

Billy knows the kiss is coming before Daddy even bends down to reach him. Faithful as always, never denying his daddy anything, Billy arches up on his toes to meet the kiss. They’re no longer childish pecks on the lips. Daddy kisses him like on his tapes. The dirty ones. The first time, like all first times with Daddy, had scared him. His mouth too full of tongue, too small to breathe. He’s used to it, now, parts his lips after the slightest graze to them. He’ll never bite down on the tongue that licks into him. Daddy doesn’t need to threaten Billy for him to know that wouldn’t be wise. This kiss is sticky thanks to the lipstick. When they separate, Billy stares with wide eyes at the red smudging Daddy’s mouth. 

A nudge to the center of his chest sends him away. By some miracle, Billy doesn’t trip on the carpet in his haste to kick his sneakers off. He can’t shed his clothes fast enough. There’s nothing stopping Daddy from coming into the bathroom and just pulling him out of the shower. If Daddy thinks he’s playing games. Urgency makes him sloppy, makes Billy drop shampoo, conditioner, soap. All of it is a mad scramble in the wet bottom of the tub. The only time Billy takes a breath and slows down is when his soapy hand slides between his cheeks. He crams two fingers inside himself despite the pain to make sure he’s clean. If he’s not, they’ll be right back in here with Billy bent over in the tub and hot water in his ass until he’s begging Daddy to stop. Daddy is the only one who enjoys that, and Billy would like to avoid it from ever happening again. His life is hopping from one avoidance to the next.

He cannot avoid Daddy forever, though. Billy lingers in the bathroom long enough to make sure he isn’t dripping anywhere. Wet towel hanging over the curtain rod, Billy crosses the tiny nub of hallway that connects every room together. Daddy is already here, sitting naked on their bed. He has something white and small in his hands. Billy finds his place at the bends of Daddy’s knees and waits for whatever comes next. Normally, he’d climb on the bed and lie on his front so Daddy can position him and do whatever he pleases. Daddy would have patted the blanket for him to do just that, though. Billy’s focus is stuck on the white cloth in Daddy’s hands.

“I hope they fit,” Daddy says with a smile when he offers the cloth to Billy. “Show your daddy what they look like on his little girl.”

They’re underwear. Girls underwear. Tiny and white, Billy isn’t sure they’ll fit either. He’s sure Daddy will continue his train of thought, though. Billy isn’t sure he can do this. Lie here and listen to his daddy talk like this. The living room had been humiliation plenty. Billy doesn’t have a choice. Just like all the other times, Billy doesn’t have a choice.

Each move he makes takes every ounce of his will. Billy shakes the little panties out and steps into one leghole and then the other. It’s not like pulling briefs up his legs. These are tighter, almost cut into him. There’s no room at all in the front, and Billy makes a face at what he looks like. When he lifts his head, finished, Daddy must not agree with him. Blue eyes so dark in the dim bedroom stare right where he almost spills out of the panties. They have their fill soon enough, though, and take their time dragging up Billy’s trembling body to meet his stare.

Now, Daddy pats the bed beside him. Billy climbs up without hesitation, but Daddy’s hands on him make him stop as he goes to lie down.

“No no, angel. I want you on your back while I play with your pussy. You’ll hold your legs up for Daddy, won’t you?”

A gentle hand in his hair catches his nod. He wants to cry, wants to scream, but he can’t. It’s almost easy to do this when Daddy is behind him. Because then Billy doesn’t have to meet his eyes. In the past, when Billy had tried to close his eyes or look away, Daddy pinched his inner thigh so hard it left a mark. He felt it at school all week. Every time he sat down, his jeans would irritate him. So when he’s on his back, it’s all the harder to not cry. That and it’s harder to talk back to Daddy. And Daddy loves hearing him say all the naughty words he taught Billy. Billy hopes maybe he’ll go hoarse so he can’t talk anymore. Daddy would believe that… maybe.

The moment Billy is down, Daddy begins to position him. Daddy snatches a pillow from the headboard and tucks it under Billy’s rear. Next, he takes Billy’s scraped, rough boy legs and bends them forward as far as they’ll go. Daddy holds him like that, almost bent in half, all while blinking down at him.

“Hold your legs up like this for Daddy. I’m counting on you, angel.”

Billy nods through a, “Yes, sir,” and does as he’s told. It doesn’t quite hurt to bend himself this way. Then again, he has no idea how long Daddy wants him to do this. Long enough until Billy makes him feel good, but sometimes that takes a while. Billy shudders through his next breath and almost takes his eyes off Daddy. He saves it at the last second, watching Daddy squeeze lube onto his fingers. Billy is still wearing the panties, though.

With his clean fingers, Daddy hooks them through the leghole of Billy’s panties and just draws them to the side. He’s still crammed awkwardly in the front. But with his legs high and wide, he exposes the rest of himself to Daddy’s hungry eyes. The first caress to his little hole always shocks him. The touch is no longer foreign or scary. Just a surprise. Billy’s ears are quick to turn pink at the wet, messy sound of Daddy’s fingers rubbing the lube on him. He glances down to watch Daddy’s wrist move. Unseen, his rough fingers play slick games up and down his crack. Daddy glances down too, but he doesn’t break their stare for long. No, it won’t be until Daddy’s fingers are in him, spreading him open only to watch him tighten around nothing when those blue eyes will show him mercy. Daddy will be more interested in his body than watching his face.

“Feel good, princess? You need to be nice and wet before I stick anything in you.”

Voice small, Billy says, “I know, Daddy. It feels good.”

“You like me touching your pussy like this?”

Daddy presses hard on his hole, almost enough to squeeze into his tightness. Billy shudders and nods. His face burns all the more, because each time they do this, Billy lies less and less. 

Daddy’s clean hand abandons the panties, doesn’t care about the sticky lube, to flatten in the bed by Billy’s head. He cages the shaking boy in, not touching him and yet all over him. It’s hard to breathe with his thighs tight to his chest like this, but it’s either breathe or faint so. And just because he faints doesn’t mean Daddy stops. Billy tugs his legs higher and then shudders again when Daddy begins wiggling a finger just barely inside him.

“Wonder how many fingers I can fit in my angel’s pussy,” Daddy muses above him. When Billy shakes his head, unsure, Daddy slides all the way inside him. “Well, there’s one.” Blue eyes look away from him as Daddy glides in and out a few times. “Did my little girl miss me? You’re so tight around me, like you don’t want me to leave.”

Daddy pulls out just to rub that fingertip around and around his hole. To feel him tremble, only to slide right back inside. The flat of Daddy’s knuckles brushes his cheeks at the bottom of every stroke. He doesn’t rock Billy’s body on their bed yet. But with Billy’s hands shaking behind his own knees, he knows it’s only a matter of time. Daddy must want that badly, because he forces Billy to take two even when the poor boy whines through his pain.

“Ah ah, angel, none of that. You were being so good for me.” Daddy shakes his head and then sits back. It’s the view he wants, Billy spread open in front of him and and yet tastefully concealed thanks to the panties. It only takes Daddy tugging them to the side to soil that false image. He thrusts faster, harder until their bodies make a wet sound together. “Daddy knows you like it when he fingers you. Don’t lie.”

Shame deep in his face, Billy whines, “Yes, sir.”

Under his breath, almost to himself, Daddy murmurs while watching his fingers, “One day I’ll get you loose enough, angel. I’ll get you nice and wet and loose so I can get all the way inside you.”

Betraying himself, Billy’s gaze shoots right down the tiny space between them. Without anyone touching him, Daddy isn’t hard. But a bead of moisture is shiny and slick at his tip. It wouldn’t take much to get Daddy hard. Billy has to use both hands to touch his daddy’s cock. It’s heavy and firm but also soft at the same time. Daddy has made him keep going, arms getting tired, until he came on Billy’s face. Maybe it was an accident.

Billy likes to think it had been an accident. Because it was disgusting, and he avoided his dad the entire time during his two weeks with mom after that. Daddy won him over with a new cassette for his Walkman and letting Billy keep earrings in while he’s here. Mom asked him to start wearing earrings again when Daddy gained every other weekend with Billy. But as soon as Daddy would bring him inside, the earrings would be out. He has a pair in now—tiny, fake diamond studs. Mom always promises she’ll get him real ones. Someday.

Would she hate him? If she were here, listening to the things Daddy says to him? Billy has sat in his daddy’s lap enough times, let Daddy fuck his thighs enough times to know what he actually wants. Daddy never shows him videos of men together. Or a man and woman having sex from behind like men. But Daddy touches him there enough to know what he wants. Billy isn’t a girl, but Daddy wants to have sex with him like one. They haven’t yet. Billy is waiting for it, terrified and yet hopeful. Maybe… once Daddy does that to him, it will stop. Daddy will have what he wants, so maybe he’ll grow bored and stop. Maybe they can just be normal again. If there ever was a normal.

Daddy shuddering and yanking Billy’s panties harder to the side certainly isn’t normal. Nothing about his Daddy squeezing three fingers inside him is normal. Hot tears overflow against his will.

“Daddy, you’re hurting me!”

Daddy’s hand not pushing against his tightness palms gently over his little cock. It’s more sensitive than it used to be, he thinks. He flinches on Daddy’s fingers at the caress and can’t decide if he wants to shy away or rub himself harder. Like swinging on a swing the wrong way. Wet, blue eyes flutter as Billy grinds his teeth over a cry. Maybe a scream, who knows. Daddy’s fingers impaling him back and forth, deeper than before still burn. The longer Daddy goes on, the more numb the burn becomes. Daddy slips all the way out at one point only to return with slicker fingers. It makes all the difference, makes the glide in and out of his body smoother. Billy jolts hard on his back, thighs clasped to his chest.

“Right there,” Daddy groans, strokes his thumb up and down his son’s cock a little harder. “Oh angel, I felt your pussy squeeze so tight around me just now. That felt good, didn’t it?”

He tries to respond, but all that comes out is confused whine. 

“That’s my good girl.” Daddy pushes as deep as he’ll go, holding himself there. Daddy holds Billy’s stare for a few seconds before he glances down to watch his fingers slide out. To watch his son’s pink hole twitch around nothing. “Wish I could fit inside you, angel. You’re still too little for me.”

The sadness, actual melancholy in Daddy’s voice doesn’t stop him from stroking himself. He keeps Billy’s panties pulled away with his dry fingers. His other hand, sticky with lube, makes quick work of his cock from soft to standing tall. Billy has seen and touched it enough. Tasted it when Daddy rubs his fingers in come and then made Billy suck them clean. That wasn’t too long ago. Billy knows he’ll watch his Daddy come tonight. He only panics when Daddy climbs up on his knees and sort of angles his wet tip down. Down to where Billy’s hole still buzzes from being stretched.

“N-no, no Daddy don’t!”

Daddy’s fingers pinching his inner thigh hold tight even when Billy chokes off his gasp. Next, Daddy slips that hand up to cover Billy’s mouth. He hasn’t moved, his guiding hand still wrapped around his cock. It’s almost touching Billy under the panties.

“Lower. Your voice,” Daddy drags out. “And you best repeat yourself, because I know I didn’t just hear you tell me no.”

If he’s honest, Daddy won’t be upset. Daddy won’t hurt him. Daddy loves him.

Almost unable to meet his dad’s narrowed glare, Billy tries, “Please Daddy, please don’t… have sex with my pussy. I’m too small, it’ll hurt, please don’t…”

Daddy’s glare lasts for a second more. His smile after is rather amused, like Billy has said something funny.

He shuffles closer, nudging the wet head of his cock against Billy’s hole, and laughs, “Angel, you’re not ready for that, I know you’re not. I wasn’t going to do that to you.” He cranes down with his hand on Billy’s chin to keep him still. Most of the lipstick is still there, and Daddy’s lips stick to his while they kiss. Daddy’s mouth is smeared red again when he sits back up, smiling softly at him. “I know you want that, and we will. You make me feel so good, angel.”

Daddy scoots closer together, deliberately rubbing the head of his cock on Billy’s skin. It’s sticky and makes a gross noise.

“You gonna be a good girl and watch Daddy come on you?”

Billy nods and hopes it’s good enough. His voice is too weak to speak, will shatter if he tries. Daddy’s soft smile remains as he hums. He once again drops his gaze between Billy’s legs. Cool air slips over his wet skin when Daddy exposes him one last time. Billy watches with fresh heat in his face as Daddy’s cock nudges against his hole. Not pushing inside, not even pressing firm like a finger. Their skin rubs together while Daddy thrusts into his fast. Now he rocks Billy’s body on the bed. Their bed squeaks sometimes when Daddy really gets into it. He’s into it now and groans through three more tugs of his fist. He comes with a shout, wet splashing over Billy’s hole and then making a mess of him. 

Back heaving like an animal, Daddy almost can’t keep his eyes open as he winds down. He stares at Billy now, panting and shuddering through the last waves. It’s the most peaceful part of all of this—Daddy shaking with pleasure and quiet. At least until Billy falls asleep. Blissful release from all the wicked things he says. Daddy would have plenty to say about this if he weren’t panting in the aftermath of his orgasm. Instead, he squeezes the last drop out of himself, lets the panties cover Billy again, and then presses his palm firmly down. To rub his come into Billy’s skin and the cotton panties. A proper mess, and he peels them back one more to look at shiny, sticky threads.

“I wish you could see how wet your pussy is, sweetheart.” Daddy smiles at him, full of promise. “When I make love to you the first time, it’ll be like that. I know you’ll love it.”

Billy’s legs don’t need any help flopping back to the bed. Daddy fondles between his legs and up his naked chest for a moment more. Done with him, Daddy staggers from the bed and wanders into the bathroom. The faucet turns on just as Billy throws an arm over his eyes. To catch any bastard, betraying tears that slip out. The urge to scream and cry rises in him again. But not out of fear this time. Out of hatred. For himself, for his daddy, for anyone who’s let this happen. Because the promise in Daddy’s voice makes his heart race. Some part of him wants that. Some part of him betrays the wrongness and his disgust. So it must be true. That he’ll love his daddy’s cock inside him. It can’t be that bad, right? Daddy wouldn’t hurt him. Daddy wants to make him feel good, like Billy does to him. Billy flings his arm down, eyes dry, and throws a plea to anyone listening. That his Daddy loves him and that Billy can trust that love. It’s all he has between him and madness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for drugged sex

Billy is thirteen with one day left of seventh grade. In a matter of seconds, he will finally be an eighth grader and untouchable at this school. You don’t mess with the oldest, biggest kids. And even any morons in his grade who maybe want to mess with him? He’ll have every teacher eating out of the palm of his hand in the first two weeks. One word from him and they’ll all be in the principal’s offense. And he’ll be free. 

Free from bullies in the future and free now from school for the summer. It’s supposed to be a weekend with Mom at the house. But Daddy had already promised to take him to a carnival up the coast. It has bigger rides, meant for teenagers like him. With any luck he’ll be tall enough, since Daddy doesn’t let him cheat and sneak on his tiptoes to slide by. All Billy can do is hope. He has plenty of time to get excited. Daddy is going to pick him up from the house, go to dinner somewhere, and then it’s off to the carnival. It’s… the first time he’s felt happy in so long. Actually happy, like he used to when he surfed. He misses this.

Mom and Cheryl aren’t home when Billy bursts in through the front door and flies across the house in his haste to get ready. Daddy is bringing him back here tonight, because it’s not his weekend. Billy only needs to change out of his clothes for clean ones. Khaki shorts and a shirt with a collar. Because Daddy likes it when he dresses smart. If Daddy is happy, then Billy’s world is at peace. He still wears jeans and t-shirts to school. It doesn’t matter that he wears these lame clothes for his daddy. It’s one of the simplest things that makes him proud. In the end, that’s all Billy cares about. His dad being proud of him.

Perfect grades, perfect attendance, scores in the top percent of his whole grade for standardized tests. All of it for his daddy. Stupid baseball too. Surely he’ll be too old for it when he turns fourteen in October? Surely? Daddy will just probably make him try out for sports in high school anyway. It’s something to keep him busy, he guesses. He can’t get up to anything if he’s busy. Chores and homework and his Walkman only take up so much of his time. If they lived near the beach or if Daddy would let him ride the bus, he could bum around the sand. Maybe pick up surfing again. As far as he knows, his board is still in the shed out back. He’s too scared to check, though. Scared that it will be ruined or stolen. Because so long as he thinks it’s in the shed, the possibility always exists that he’ll return to the waves. 

But then Daddy is here, and Billy is quick to tuck his lost love away. Daddy compliments him on dressing nicely, pets his hair, and then they’re off. Into Daddy’s truck and on the road. Billy has no idea how far away they’re going. It’s all Daddy’s plan so. Billy fills the time with talking about the summer reading he has to do and if Daddy is going to drive him to all his games or if he needs Mom to help out. If they’ve figured out if one of them will take Billy full-time. He broaches that subject with all the softness he can muster. Because his opinion on that has changed from one end of the spectrum to the other and back and forth.

“Not sure yet, angel. I’m working on it though,” Daddy promises, letting go of the wheel long enough to squeeze Billy’s left thigh. “You know how much I want you to live with me all the time.”

At first, he’d wanted to be with Daddy all the time, too. After not seeing him for years, practically never because Billy being a baby makes it not count, Billy couldn’t get enough. And then gradually he changed back to wanting to stay with them equally. And then only with Mom after the whole… lipstick and panties thing. For the rest of the summer, Billy wanted to stay with Mom. On Daddy’s weeks and in general. He almost said something to her. About sharing Daddy’s bed and sleeping naked with him. About sitting in Daddy’s lap while on the couch and Daddy touching him.

He recalls it so clearly while staring out the window in Daddy’s pick-up. Mostly because they were in Mom’s car driving back from the grocery store when he spoke up. But they pulled onto the street not too long after, and there were groceries to haul in and things to put away. Billy lost his nerve by the time Mom collapsed in a chair with a damp, cold cloth blotting around her throat. She works so hard to buy groceries and school things for him and cassettes when she can. She loves him so much, and it would crush her if he told her. She’d blame herself.

So Billy had swallowed the cry for help and just re-wetted the hand towel for her when the heat of her skin finally made it pointless. If someone were to ask him now what he wants? Mom or Daddy? He’s back to not being able to pick between them. Mom loves him like always, sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps him afloat. Daddy’s love is so strange to him now, but familiar. There is comfort in that familiarity. If Daddy were to stop touching him, Billy thinks it would hurt his feelings. Like he’d done something wrong and could no longer make his daddy proud. So between Mom’s love and Daddy’s pride well… He’s strung between the two and takes the good with the bad. Mom leaves him lonely and Daddy leaves him twisted. 

They drive long enough for Billy to run out of things to say. Which doesn’t take a lot, because he doesn’t run his mouth like some people do. He and Daddy don’t like a lot of chatter. Daddy does him the favor of turning up the radio when the silence lingers. The radio gives him an excuse to tune out and daydream like he does at school. He daydreams about another boy, mostly. Eugene. Or Gene for short, because he hates his full name. It’s so not cool. Billy can relate. He daydreams about Gene and wonders what it’d be like to hold Gene’s hand and sneak him notes through their lockers. If Gene would like him back. It’s not worth ruining their friendship. It’ll go away eventually, his crush. Billy thinks maybe this isn’t his first—it’s just the first he recalls being serious. He wants to kiss Gene. He’s never wanted to kiss anyone but his…

They pull off the highway, and Daddy’s pick-up kicks up gravel and dust when they roll to a stop in front of a diner. From here, the highway is still visible, still plenty loud. Billy takes the lead and runs straight into the frigid wall of AC when he opens the diner’s front door. He doesn’t take off, stands tall and straight like Daddy keeps a hand on him. He follows Daddy when someone snatches two menus from the stack by the door and then guides them to a booth far away from the front of the diner. It’s a big half-circle booth meant for a lot of people. The diner is empty, though, and it’s nice to have all the space. To sit next to Daddy instead of across from him. It’s quieter back here. Calmer. Just the way his daddy likes it. 

“Tell me what you want before you go wash your hands.”

No excuse for bad manners even if they’re having a good time. 

“Yes, sir.”

He says those two words so much that they no longer carry weight in Billy’s head. Just two sounds that bleat out of him on autopilot. It’s simple enough to rattle off what he wants—a cheeseburger with no tomato, because they warm up under the bun and get slimy—before he wiggles back out of the booth to wash his hands. Billy keeps his excitement for their outing in the center of his mind, doesn’t let himself think about anything else.

He won’t be going home with Daddy after this. Daddy has to take him back to Mom. Even if it’s been longer than usual between them being together. Their last kiss, Daddy’s hand tight in his hair and on his ass, was Sunday night two weeks ago when Daddy brought him back to Mom. Billy lingers in the mens room long enough to stare at himself in the mirror. He looks no different from any other boy. Hair almost to his shoulders, Daddy constantly threatening to cut it all off if he steps a single hair out of line. Billy can’t meet his own eyes for long despite how much he wants to make a goofy face in the mirror. It’s too much right now, so he spins on his heel and marches back out the door. He pauses just inside the alcove that leads to the bathroom, though.

From here, he has a perfect shot of Daddy in the booth. There’s a milkshake waiting for Billy. Daddy didn’t mention it when he gave their waitress the order, so it must be a surprise. Daddy leans to the left to hover above it. From the breast pocket of his button-up shirt, he slips a folded piece of paper out. It’s thick paper like pale envelopes from school the teachers use in their desks. Daddy glances over at a busboy wiping a table down before he upends the folded slip of paper and taps the bottom.

Billy is too far away to see what Daddy dumps out right onto the top of the milkshake. No whipped cream or cherry, not that Billy likes those gross, plasticy ones. Billy stands rooted to the spot just outside the bathroom as Daddy takes the spoon in the milkshake and stirs it up. Mixing whatever he’s added to it. When he’s done, he goes right back to reading the newspaper he brought in from the truck. Dread deeper and darker than the bottom of the ocean fills Billy as he forces his feet forward. He has no choice but to return to the booth. No choice but to drink the milkshake under Daddy’s watchful eye. Knowing he did something to it.

He tapes on his best smile as he scoots back beside Daddy with a, “You didn’t say I could get a milkshake.”

Daddy glances sideways at him from the newspaper, shakes it to settle in between his hands, and says, “For your good grades, angel. Straight A’s like always. You’ll graduate high school and get a free ride anywhere if you keep that up.” Daddy flicks the fingers of his left hand to the milkshake. “I won’t tell your mother about you eating dessert before dinner if you don’t.”

Would Daddy deny it if Billy says something? About what he’s just seen? Daddy lies plenty, but Billy gets popped in the mouth if he does. It’s better than being belted, of course. Daddy doesn’t like being told no. That’s also grounds for being popped in the mouth. Billy remembers the last time he told Daddy no. He was tired as they slipped into their bed, naked as always, and he didn’t want Daddy’s hands on him. So he said no and please and tried to roll away. Daddy’s palm slapped across his lips cut the inside of his mouth on his teeth. So he had to lie there with blood in his mouth while Daddy fucked his thighs. In the morning, Billy’s teeth were stained slightly orange around the gums. It hurt to rinse with mouthwash, fingers peeling his bottom lip down to look at the cuts. So… it’s best to just… trust that Daddy won’t hurt him. Daddy loves him after all.

Smile not as strong anymore and his insides sick, Billy says, “Thank you, Daddy.”

He keeps his eyes trained on the cooks in the kitchen while he sips. He hits a pocket of something salty. And then it’s just cold strawberry in his mouth. Billy has no idea how he’s going to sit here and eat the burger he doesn’t want anymore while Daddy watches him like a hawk from behind his newspaper. Daddy will say something if he doesn’t eat. He’ll suspect Billy has seen what he did. Tampering. Billy can’t convince himself that Daddy put anything good in his milkshake. He can’t trust Daddy’s love enough to believe that, but the fear in him forces him to keep drinking.

He has a water glass too from when they first sat down. The ice is already melted. Billy knows he won’t take a single sip of the water until all the milkshake is gone. And it’s not a kid-size one but the full-Nelson in a steel cup and everything. Billy’s hand trembles when he lifts it to take the long-handled spoon out. He stares at the streaks of pale pink on the bowl of the spoon like there will be anything left of what Daddy put in here. There’s not, of course, and Billy sets the spoon down. Like this, he’s free to relax in the cushion behind him and hold the steel cup to his chest. It’s something to focus on. The chill of it in his hands as he begins to sweat.

First from nerves, surely. How could he not be nervous after seeing Daddy do this? He almost wants to laugh. Laugh at himself for drinking the milkshake anyway. Laugh at himself for not complaining about sickness, that Daddy should just take him home. Why doesn’t he just ‘accidentally’ knock it on the floor and just deal with the consequences? A giggle rises unbidden in him as he considers how much trouble he would get in for that. Daddy would definitely belt him for it. Not that Billy could feel it right now. Everything is sort of loopy, the room sloshing around like he’s staggering around on a boat. He’d been on one once. They were moving fast enough to deafen him with the wind, but when he looked back at the shore, it all disappeared so slowly. He does giggle at that thought, rolls his head to look up at his Daddy.

“Daddy are you… are you gonna get on any rides with me?”

Newspaper folded over and abandoned to make room for the waitress approaching them, Daddy smiles at him and says, “Maybe. Sit up, son, I don’t need you making a mess while you eat.”

Billy’s, “Yes, sir,” comes out as a single slur, voice sliding through it the whole time. He even tries again to say it right, but his lips are too numb to do it correctly. So he lets it go.

Sitting up is easier than Daddy makes it out to be. Careful with the cold steel in his hands, they shake as Billy has to use both to guide it back to the table. Blue eyes blink almost out of sync, and then Billy glances up again to his daddy. The same eyes wait for him. 

A nod towards his plate.

“Dig in, angel. You must be hungry.”

Not at all, but he nods. The fear and sickness twisting his stomach rebel at the first bite of food in his mouth. He chews for entirely too long until everything is mush in his teeth. He doesn’t want to swallow it, gags when he tries. Billy just squeezes his eyes shut, fists his hands, and forces it down. He eyes the water, wants to drink that to sweep all the saliva out of his mouth. Is he drooling? Maybe it’s because he’d almost thrown up just now. But even as Billy’s left hand twitches towards the sweaty glass, he knows better. Expectation curls his fingers into his palm and then forces both hands to the steel cup again. Shivering hard, he sucks on the end of the straw and tries to just enjoy the strawberry flavor. At least it’s not salty anymore. 

Billy doesn’t recall trying to eat more. The plate and table in front of him change between blinks. Fries move around. A new smear of ketchup paints the white plate. Bites slowly cut into the burger. He manages it, or someone who looks like him manages it. Sitting upright on his bottom takes up so much of his focus. He wants to lie down and sleep right here in the booth. How is he supposed to go on rides if he’s tired like this? Daddy’s hand smoothing across his upper back rips a delayed jolt and whine out of him. Daddy has pet him twice before Billy rolls his head on the backrest of the booth to look up at him. He can’t lift his head or any part of him anymore. Everything is too heavy. Even Daddy’s stare while they’re sitting in public, in broad daylight, is too heavy. 

“Daddy,” he whines, distantly scared but unable to panic. 

Daddy just hums at him and squeezes Billy’s far shoulder. Any more strength in that hand would bruise him, but the pinch doesn’t graze Billy’s awareness at all. It’s almost comforting, and Billy leans to his right to be closer to his daddy.

“You’re looking awfully tired, angel. Don’t you wanna go to the carnival? You earned it, being my good boy.”

The words pet over his ears. The praise sinks into him, makes him feel good. He squirms under Daddy’s hand and stare, refusing to look away. 

“I wanna go…”

He means to the carnival. Because it’s supposed to be a fun day for him. Daddy promised. Daddy shushes him though and just keeps rubbing his back. Billy couldn’t stop sweating… however long ago, when the food had arrived. Now he shivers and clicks his teeth like he has a fever. So Daddy’s hand on his back is welcomed heat. It sinks into his cheeks despite everything, and Billy squirms with his whole body. He’s about to whine again when Daddy pauses to pinch just under Billy’s left arm.

“Be still,” he warns. “We’ll leave in a minute.”

But not for the carnival. No, Daddy drives a short distance down the road to a motel with its neon sign on despite the daylight. It’s nearly June, the sun won’t go down until 8 or later. Plus… Daddy is supposed to take him back to Mom when they’re done. He’s too weak and heavy to even stand from the truck. Daddy walks around the nose of the pick-up, opens the door carefully, and then slips Billy into his arms. His little chin hooks over a broad shoulder, Daddy’s arm under his bottom keeping him there. They’re chest-to-chest. Every step Daddy takes to the motel’s office vibrates through Billy’s skin. It’s too much for him. He wants to cry.

Voices speaking a language he should understand float over him. Something about Daddy driving them around from out of town, only for Danny to not feel well. They’re stopping here for the night in case Danny is actually sick. Who is Danny? Him? Why would Daddy lie about his name and what they’re doing?

The other voice hums at that. When it’s all over, the voice rattles off a number that must mean something to Daddy, because they’re off again. Billy lifts his eyes up when they walk away. A woman stands behind the front desk. She stares hard at them, her bushy eyebrows together. Worried? Afraid? Does Billy know her? She sort of looks like the women Mom works with: the weight of their lives pulling them down. Flattening them. Tired. Billy’s eyes meet hers as Daddy steps back into the heat and lets the door shut behind him. Billy finds the strength to lift one of his hands and wave at her. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it. The lady’s concerned stare is the last Billy sees of her.

The motel room smells like the inside of an old library book when Daddy opens the door. He hums and jostles Billy higher in his arm. The other tosses the key onto a little table and then pets the back of his head. Billy manages a peal of noise, maybe a whine or mumble. Daddy just walks him to the bed and lays him down with his head on a pillow. Sitting beside him, Daddy watches him while petting fingers through Billy’s curls. Billy’s stomach flips inside him. Excited. They’re going to the carnival now, right? But the lie Daddy had just told… Where are they?

He tries once more to say, ‘Daddy,’ but again all that comes out is an incoherent whimper. Daddy’s face softens in a smile. Palm blanketing Billy’s forehead, Daddy bends down and takes his lips in a gentle kiss. Just Daddy bobbing back and forth to bring their lips together again and again. Billy’s are already soft and lax under his, need nothing to be licked apart for Daddy to slip his tongue in. Daddy’s tongue is always too big for his mouth. Too big, too aggressive. Not right now, though. Daddy licks into his mouth until Billy whines around him. When Daddy pulls away, they separate with a wet sound and a curled whimper from Billy. Something like a moan. He doesn’t understand.

Daddy’s voice is thick and hushed when he murmurs, “I’ve been waiting for this moment since I first held you, angel.” His hand in Billy’s hair drifts down to hold his little chin, to thumb his bottom lip. “You’re old enough, now.” Billy shudders and whines, but Daddy keeps right on going. “I can stretch you out big enough, now. Do you remember the last time Daddy played with your pussy?”

Not this again. Billy’s head is too full of bees or cotton or something to deal with this. He hiccups through pressure building in his throat. About to cry. He can’t though, he can’t cry in front of Daddy. That will just make everything so much worse. Daddy smiles down on him, so peaceful and warm. Why can’t he just have that? Why can’t that just be the normal between them? Billy gives it his all into moving on the bed. Away. But no matter how he strains, nothing moves. He is lead sinking into the bed. With Daddy’s hand still at his chin and that hot focus zeroed in on him, there is no escape.

Billy cannot manage a reply, but Daddy doesn’t need one. His face is peaceful and loving as he peels Billy out of his clothes. It all ends up folded and left on the little table with the room key. Billy is too naked, too vulnerable in the dim dust of this room. At least Daddy starts to undress, too. He’ll be warm when he comes back down. Because this is happening. All the tapes Billy has watched, all the times he has spread out on his back or hunched on his knees for Daddy to touch him. Billy has always known it would end up like this. Shivering, he just hopes that he’s right: that Daddy will stop once they do this. There’s nothing left after this. After Daddy fucks him like a girl.

The only thing Daddy takes from his clothes, folded up neatly beside Billy’s, is lube. He tucks it under the pillow beside Billy’s head. For safekeeping. They won’t dive in right away. Even though the haze that makes it hard to think, hard to breathe, Billy recalls Daddy murmuring to him. Mumbling sometimes more to himself than to Billy. About how Daddy would take his time and make sure everything would be perfect. That he’d touch Billy all over and make him feel good, too. Even so out of it? Billy’s body won’t understand any of that. He’s not old enough yet. His stomach gets butterflies when he thinks about kissing Gene or Daddy, but that’s about it. He’s not ready. He doesn’t have a choice.

Daddy is everywhere and yet nowhere when he finally cages Billy in from above. Lips and teeth and tongue seek out every inch of him. Not to mark, Mom would notice. Someone would notice. That doesn’t stop the scratch of Daddy’s moustache over his chest when lips swallow his tiny nipple. Daddy sucks until it hurts, until something finally cuts through the cotton in Billy’s head. His little squeal is pained and frightened, but Daddy steamrolls right over it with a groan. It tickles across Billy’s nipple. A new sensation. Daddy does the same to the other one, thick fingers rolling the one that’s wet. That’s not new, fingers pinching his nipples. It’s so different to what he’s used to, though. He squirms as bet he can, barely twitching at all, when Daddy pulls off, bites him once for good measure.

“Oh my little angel,” he groans. He sucks a breath through his teeth and bites kisses down to Billy’s navel. No hair yet. Still smooth. “Daddy will make you feel so good. You’ll never need your mother or anyone else. Daddy will give you everything.”

Billy has no fight to resist hands petting his thighs apart. Now, Daddy snatches the pillow beside Billy and stuffs it under his butt. Just like at home. To prop him up and make everything better. Billy doesn’t understand how this is better, but it must be if Daddy is doing it. His jolt from slippery fingers swirling over his entrance is delayed. Daddy already squeezes a finger in him when Billy flinches, and another squeal from him bounces off the thin walls. Daddy’s clean hand is around his mouth in a second. His palm scoops up Billy’s whimpers and guides them right back inside him. Like always.

“That’s very lovely, angel, but keep quiet for me. We’ll have to stop if someone knocks on the door.”

Will someone actually come if Billy screams? No one has ever come before. No matter his whimpers or tears or curses locked behind his teeth, eyes hot and full of despair and hatred. Hating everyone and everything, because someone let this happen to him. Someone made him all twisted up inside, simultaneously loving Daddy and hating him. Missing his hands when they’re apart but also fearing what they do to him. Billy doesn’t know which way is right anymore, he’ll be stuck like this forever, and no one is here to help him. No one ever helped him when he needed it. Staring up at the ceiling and stretched to the point of pain, he grits his teeth under Daddy’s hand to not scream. It won’t matter. It never mattered.

Daddy towers above him. The insides of Billy’s thighs are already hooked on his daddy’s hips. He’s not fit enough to show off the ridge of muscle above his hips anymore. He’s grown softer over the years. It’s the first time Billy has stared down their bodies and realized the change. Billy is taller, too. Broader than he was during that first time in Cheryl’s house where Daddy held him on his lap, asked if anyone was home. All the way back then, Billy thinks, Daddy wanted this. Maybe even longer. The first time Daddy held him, huh? Blue eyes could not be more hollow and afraid when they glance up to meet their sires. Daddy is all smiles. Sweat glissens on his brow.

“Ready?”

No.

Daddy is a bubble of heat on top of him. Back bent over Billy, he hovers above the poor boy just enough to watch Billy’s face when he pushes inside. A tear or two squeezes out against Billy’s will. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t whimper or whine. Just the two tears dripping pat pat on the pillow case. Daddy shushes him and holds still. How much is inside him? The whole thing? No, because Daddy groans as he nudges himself deeper. The weight and pressure of something so big inside him makes Billy’s vision black out at the edges. Maybe if he passes out Daddy will stop. Or just keep going. Being asleep has never stopped his daddy. And they won’t be stopping now. Not with Daddy’s body flush to his ass. All the way inside. Full.

Big hands pet his ruddy cheeks and play with his hair while Daddy wheezes, “Oh angel, you feel…” He shivers and grips Billy’s head in his hands. They’re in each other’s breathing space as he curls down to be nearer to Billy. Billy sees himself in Daddy’s eyes when he murmurs, “You feel heavenly.”

They’re rocking the bed soon enough. The motel bed doesn’t have the give and squeak of their bed back home. Still, Billy knows what’s expected of him. Daddy hikes his legs up, and Billy wraps them around him. Daddy guides Billy’s hands up so Billy can hold on to him. Billy’s nails are short, bitten mostly, but they provide him a modicum of purchase in Daddy’s skin. He holds on like that, blunt boy fingers scrambling as Daddy pops their bodies together. Billy stares up at the ceiling, not really seeing anything, and lets Daddy’s deep, guttural moans wash over him.

It… almost feels good. Almost. Daddy is too big to fit in him. The pain is worse right at his entrance. Right where Daddy’s cock spears him open. Where Daddy thrusts through him no matter that pain. Each smack of Daddy’s hips into his ass threatens to break him. His control over his voice and tears is already so loose. So Billy digs his nails into his daddy’s shoulders to keep it all in. Daddy just moans louder all around him. It’s faster and harder, Daddy’s hips stuttering sometimes. Almost slipping out of him. The heat is unbearable. More than once Billy’s eyes roll back in his head as he loses pockets of time. How long is this going to last? Forever? Is he going to have to lie on his back and take this forever? His heart will break. It’s the first time he recognizes how soft and fragile he feels inside. It’s his heart breaking, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Humid breaths pant away in his hair and down his neck when Billy opens his eyes. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been closed. He blinks haze and tears out of them, lets a few roll down his hot face. His chin is still hooked over Daddy’s shoulder. With his eyes clear, he tunes into the bright column of light cutting across the room. Which is strange, because none of the lights are on. The curtains are tightly shut. The motel room door is open. But hadn’t Daddy locked it? Surely he did.

Billy doesn’t feel Daddy speed up between his thighs. Because when he blinks next, Mom is there. In her grey work uniform, hair messy. Standing in the column of light from outside, she is an angel with her hair catching the rays. She stares without expression at them. Like she’s not here either, like her and Billy are far away from this madness. Another blink. Billy shivers under his daddy and glances down Mom’s still form. His Little League bat is in her hand. Clenched so tightly her knuckles are bone white. Harder, jarring thrusts from Daddy have Billy’s eyes zooming back up to Mom’s face. Is she real? Is he imagining this? Daddy groans loudest of all in Billy’s blushing ear and then freezes buried deep inside him. Hips jerking. Coming inside him.

Cheeks wet against his will, Billy meets Mom’s eyes. They see him. She’s real. She’s really here. She says nothing, expression still blank, as she approaches the bed. Billy says nothing too as Daddy urges him down to the bed. Daddy has to peel them apart to get Billy to let go. Soaked in sweat and weak, though, Billy is no contest for Daddy’s strength. Flat on his back, he cannot see Mom’s approach. For a terrible second, he thinks she’s not real. That he’s alone with Daddy and that this will never end. He is hollow inside, messy where Daddy shifts his thighs apart to look at him. To watch come spill out of him. Like a girl.

“Beautiful,” is the last thing Daddy sighs before the barrel of Billy’s baseball bat cracks into his head.

Daddy doesn’t even get a scream out. Because Mom hits him again. And again. He topples over and off his knees. Bouncing off the bed, he is dead weight on the floor. Mom doesn’t give up. She stands above him where he’s stuck between the wall and the bed and brings the bat down again and again. He makes less noise the more swings she takes. Choking and gasping and gurgling. Billy cannot see him, just turns his head to the left to watch. When the tip of the bat comes up red and gory, Billy slams his eyes shut.

He screams. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief sex scene between Max and Eleven. They are 17 and 16 respectively.

Billy is still thirteen, will be fourteen in about two months, when he meets Susan and Maxine Mayfield at the airport in Chicago. They spot him first, and they rush to meet him. They do so against his comfort and desire, but he just rolls his lips into a tight line and stands up straight. Staring at their smiles and fiery hair. How Mom is related to Susan, he doesn’t know. Susan’s family is all he has. Cheryl is not really his aunt, so he could not stay with her after everything was said and done. It was Hawkins, Indiana with an aunt he never met or remain in the foster care system in California. So the lesser of two evils.

Susan doesn’t let him sit up front. She worries he’s not tall enough and that if something happens he’ll get hurt. It’s about three hours back to Hawkins, apparently. So he sits behind her. And Maxine piles in the back with him, a long-limbed teenager with acne on her jaw. Not bad. More than Billy, though. He angles himself away from her, not interested in entertaining her curious stare. He doesn’t know how much they know. It’s the beginning of August, now. In the past two months, he has learned to keep his cards close and not give anyone anything. To get a feel for how much they know. What they want out of him.

The lady at the motel he’d thought he recognized apparently once worked with Mom. She recognized him in return, realized something was fishy, and called his mom. It was a miracle that she was home already. Apparently? Mom didn’t even know about the whole carnival thing. And to think, when she finally dropped the bloody bat and clutched him to her, naked and drugged and fucked, that he tried to apologize. For something. Everything. They just held each other and wailed until the police showed up. He hasn’t seen her since. She’s in jail for… hurting Neil. Billy’s jaw tries to betray him and tremble when he thinks about all the blood. About how long Mom hit him. About how he never saw Neil get up again.

“So you excited about going to a new school or whatever?”

Maxine’s voice is sort of bassy in Billy’s ear. He’s not expecting it, nearly leaps out of his skin at the first puff of breath on his ear. His hair is still long. He’d bitten and kicked and scratched anyone who tried to touch it. Started not washing it to really drive home how much he wasn’t going to let anyone touch it. It needs a good scrubbing at this very moment, curls greasy and flat to his head. His eyes are still blue. Nothing will change that. Looking himself in the eye is a challenge he forces himself to meet every day. At least he still looks like his mom. It’s all he has of her right now. No one can take that from him.

Snarl fresh on his face to cover up his weakness, Billy’s voice cracks when he barks, “What’s it to you?”

There is hardness in him, now. Meanness. Billy doesn’t know where it’s come from. From the flurry of activity after Mom saved him. From the two months spent in a foster care center. Something. Billy probably shouldn’t be aware of the details of everything. He snooped on his own file from the desk of his social worker. She was too trusting of his tears. He lured her away and flicked his file open to get all the details yet unknown to him. Things he would have never known if not for that. With those fragments and his memories, Billy has the whole story, now.

After the cops had pried him out of Mom’s arms—screaming, both of them screaming and clawing for each other—they brought him to a hospital. He didn’t recognize anything from the windows. Nurses fussed over him as they drew blood to figure out what Neil gave him. What Neil drugged him with. Billy still doesn’t know what gamma-hydroxybutyrate is, can’t even pronounce it. He is waiting for a moment to look it up in a book or ask a librarian or something. The hospital is where he met his social worker from whom he would eventually lift all this information. Amy Rennard. Miss Rennard, he calls her. Despite her insisting so gently that he could call her Amy.

She was present while doctors clustered around him lying back in a weird chair. His legs were in the air and splayed wide while they looked at him. No one asked him questions. No one asked where they should look to find the evidence. He screamed again when they touched him between his legs, and that’s when everything stopped. He thinks maybe he passed out. The next he knew, Miss Rennard was passing him off to someone else. He stayed in a place that was like a mix between a daycare and a hospital for three days. 72 hours. He waited for something. Anything. There were other kids there, too. And if anyone cried while they were bedding down for the night, they would get yelled at. After that and the foster care center, Billy has mastered crying without a sound. The cursed three days passed only for him to be shipped off to a center. Waiting for a foster family. Two months later and nearly a world away, he’s here in the backseat of a Chevy with shocks that whine and Maxine Mayfield glaring at him.

“Wow, someone needs an attitude adjustment real quick.”

“Maxine,” Susan says gently.

Two hands on the wheel with her arms so tense, her green-grey eyes watch them. Billy turns a smaller glare on her in the rearview mirror. Not backing down, forcing her to look away first. He can do that, now. It’s part of the meanness. He doesn’t mind that part so much. 

Susan tries again, even softer now, “Let Billy rest, he’s been through a lot today. And I’m sure Daddy will want to hear what Billy has to say, too.”

He almost throws up in his mouth. Almost. He can’t catch a damn break, can he? He hopes, prays even, that Maxine doesn’t call her father that. Billy knows he’ll lose it. He keeps his face carefully blank, maybe a bit mean, as Maxine scoffs and turns towards her own window. Serves her right for following him back here. If she’d thought he would be timid and meek just because they’re taking him in? When he didn’t ask for any of this? Was content to go on living the lie between Mom and Neil? She deserves more than his snarl. He’s not here to make friends. He wants to go home. To Mom.

When they roll under the carport at the house on Cherry Lane, there isn’t much to drag inside. Susan tries to take Billy’s meager belongings. To carry his suitcase up the stairs and through the back door. Billy denies her and lifts it himself. It’s not too much of a struggle. Being stronger wouldn’t hurt. He wants to work on that. He remembers the flash of Mom’s arms up and down with the baseball bat. Panting through her fear and fury, but not exertion. He wants to be strong like her. Stronger. He’ll have to figure it out.

They’ve picked a room for him. Right at the front of the house. His new bed is in a corner with the window that looks through the enclosed porch. Easy to climb in and out of. If he needs to. The walls are thin, though. Maxine had scoffed again at Susan following him like a mother hen and slammed the door of her room. He thinks she starts off with the radio, because it’s an eclectic collection of songs. When he tunes into the awful lyrics of ‘Love Shack’ he longs for his Walkman and his cassettes. Miss Rennard didn’t allow him to claim anything from Neil’s apartment during that whole flurry of activity. She barely let him take anything from Cheryl’s house. No matter how he screamed or begged, they wouldn’t let him take his Walkman. He almost misses that as much as Mom. 

Susan stands with her hands clasped in front of her, blocking the door, as Billy looks around. The low furniture in here matches. The closet is empty except for hangers. Strangely, in front of what used to be a mantle for a fireplace, now walled over, is a brown couch that’s sort of sunken in. Billy wonders what the Mayfields has used this room for before him. He turns on a heel to face Susan and stares up at her. Waiting for her to leave. She doesn’t, sort of notices the couch and startles like she wasn’t expecting it to be there. 

“Oh, I’m sorry Billy, I thought Ken moved this to the basement. I’ll talk to him about it when he gets home so you—”

“It can stay. I don’t mind.”

It fills the room up. Makes it more cozy. Plus if it’s going to stay, then he’s going to use it. What teenager has a couch in their bedroom? It screams cool, and Billy even softens the frown on his face to appease Susan. She buckles like a belt. Billy wonders how far she’ll buckle. What she’ll allow. 

Still, she goes on softly, “Are you sure? I don’t want you to be cramped in here, Ken can move it, Billy, I promise.”

Billy just shakes his head and then turns to his suitcase. He hefts it on the bed, catches the lid when it springs open. It’s all clothes donated to the center. They’re not his, truthfully. Just material to cover his body. Susan is still behind him, watching him remove every neatly folded item. He’d packed it himself. Took what he wanted. Who would stop him?

“Not tonight but tomorrow, I was thinking we could go to the department store on Main Street and…”

Billy sets down the last shirt and then glances over his shoulder. Susan tries to flatten the sadness in her mouth. Pity. Billy almost scowls at her. 

“Yes?”

She startles and goes on, “And I can take you shopping. Clothes, school supplies, anything you want. How does that sound?”

He hates it when people talk to him like that. Like he’s a stupid child. Like he has a choice. The illusion of choice burns him the most. He never has a choice.

Head swiveling back around, Billy stares into the open maw of the suitcase, almost empty, when he says, “Okay.”

It’s the only word he can manage, may bite her head off and direct his frustrations on her. It’s something he’d heard a counselor discussing with Miss Rennard. His anger issues. How he lashed out at adults at the foster care center. How he was difficult with the other kids. That it was a typical response based on his case, but that Miss Rennard should keep a close eye on him and warn any family that took him in. Because he’s dangerous, apparently. He doesn’t feel dangerous at the moment. Then again, none of the Mayfields have done anything to piss him off. He’s yet to meet the man of the house. Ken Mayfield. Billy doesn’t even know what he looks like. It’s Billy’s second prayer of the day when he begs for Mr Mayfield to look nothin like Neil. He won’t be able to handle it.

His first shower in the house on Cherry Lane takes place immediately after his suitcase is sorted and shoved in the bottom of the closet. The room is still neat, bed still made when he leaves it. Not that anyone will take notice of him yet. And they never will, because he has no intention of staying once he’s old enough. The powers that be in California may demand he return for whatever reason. Miss Rennard has mentioned him testifying in his mother’s case. The state’s case against her for murder. As Billy stares at the drain sucking grey suds away—he’d needed to wash his hair twice to get it actually clean—he lingers over that concept. Murder. That Mom killed Neil right in front of him with his baseball bat. Hitting him until there was nothing left. He throws up stomach acid and uses up the rest of the hot water curled up in the bottom of the tub. When he finds the strength to stand, the rest of his shower is a cold one. Numbing.

Mr Mayfield looks nothing like Neil. He is slightly round in his stomach, almost jolly. His bald head sort of helps perpetuate that image. He is all smiles and small eyes behind his glasses. The goatee around his mouth is trimmed neatly. Instead of squatting down to introduce himself to Billy, he simply holds out his hand for Billy to shake. He’s right handed, and so Billy lifts his non-dominant hand to shake back. Mr Mayfield does not squeeze his hand to the point of pain. Or to prove a point. A weight Billy hadn’t noticed before lifts off his shoulders when Mr Mayfield just nods at him and asks if he’s looking forward to shopping with Susan tomorrow.

Dinner in the kitchen, the table set up by the back door they’d entered through, is a casual sort of affair. No prayers, no lectures. The only time Mr Mayfield scolds anyone is when Maxine gets snippy about learning to drive before school starts in September. That her dad had promised to teach her on the weekends, but he’s put it off and made excuses. It’s such a normal thing. A normal dinner conversation between a family. Billy had known he would be out of place here. He would be out of place here no matter what. The normalcy twists him up inside. He moves the first home-cooked meal he’s eaten in two months around to make it look like he did more than pick at it. When Maxine just stands from the table, dumps her dishes in the sink, and walks off, Billy lingers. 

Susan and Mr Mayfield take their time winding down dinner. Mr Mayfield packs away leftovers in plastic containers while Susan is at the sink. She nudges scraps off the dinner plates into the trash under the sink. It’s a double sink, and one side of it slowly fills with soapy, hot water. Susan doesn’t notice Billy at her elbow until she turns the water off and goes to reach for the drying rack. To drag it closer.

“Oh!”

She actually jumps. No one comes running to see if she’s okay. Maxine’s bedroom door is shut, music and her off-key singing loud. Mr Mayfield has returned to the basement where he and Susan share the finished space. Billy had ventured down there to ask to take a shower. Because he and the other foster kids weren’t allowed in the showers unsupervised. It’s just how things were done. Plus, he’s pretty sure Maxine would get herself twisted up if he accidentally used her things. The temptation existed to squeeze out her expensive shampoo and conditioner and wash them down the drain. Just to be an asshole about it. But he shook it off, hated himself more for even thinking that. Maxine didn’t do this to him. He shouldn’t hate her. Anger transference, Miss Rennard’s voice whispers in his ear.

Hand over her collarbones, Susan takes a breath or two and says, “I’m sorry, Billy, I didn’t see you there. Do you need something?’

That’s a strange thing to ask. He doesn’t need anything, he’s just here for chores. So he flicks an eyebrow up at her for her troubles.

“Don’t you want me to do those?”

He’s yet to meet an adult who’s taken him answering their question with another question well. Most jump on the defensive and warn him about his smart mouth. Better a smart mouth than a dumb one, but they don’t like that either. Even if it’s true. 

Susan just blinks at him, glances to the waiting dishes, and then back to him. Her face softens from her surprise, leaving it in the dust.

“No, that’s all right, thank you for asking, though. Maxine used to do them when she was your age, but she dropped a plate once and cut her hand rather badly, so we stopped that. It wouldn’t be fair for you to do chores we didn’t ask her to do.”

Fairness is a square peg in a circle hole to Billy. He can’t do anything with it, just has to hold it awkwardly in his hands. Susan smiles down at him while rolling her sleeves up.

“That was very nice of you to ask, Billy. I know who to go to in the future if I need help, okay?”

Ah and there it is. The coddling. He knows when he’s not wanted, so he spins on his heel and heads for his room. This is about all the pity and charity he can take at this point. Accepting generosity hadn’t come easy to him before all this madness. Now it’s twice as hard, and he has a well of anger ready to overflow when it’s too much. So, he closes the door to his room—a novelty, having a room to himself again—and lies flat on his back to stare at the ceiling. It won’t get dark until closer to 9. That’s at least three hours of lying here and trying to keep his mind blank or busy. If he is weak, he will turn his thoughts to things that make him want to tear something apart or sob. And he can’t do either of those things. So he waits until dark and falls asleep only after Maxine’s music stops vibrating through the walls.

Billy doesn’t have hopes that the shopping trip with Susan today will go well. Something in his gut tells him that when he startles awake. At least Maxine is old enough to have friends to keep her busy, so she isn’t coming with them. As he and Susan leave through the back door, Maxine bounds out the front to hang out with a cluster of boys. Well, mostly boys. Passing them with Billy sitting up front this time, he eyes a girl with bob-length hair who sticks close to Maxine. Who tucks herself to Maxine’s side and holds her hand so delicate between their bodies as they walk. Maybe no one sees it but Billy. He meets impossibly dark eyes for a brief second before they turn. She’d seen him looking. Whoever she is.

A heavy stone of dread rolls around in Billy’s stomach when they step into the department store. Partially because losing Susan in this place would be a nightmare. And the hairs on the back of Billy’s neck standing tall convince him Neil will just appear around every corner. If he thinks about it, this is his first time being in a big public space since the hospitals and the 72 hours and never seeing his mom again. Billy takes a stumbling step back, almost behind Susan. Her hand is gentle between his shoulder blades. She does not push him forward. She just holds him.

The tension is there. To speak. For Susan to comfort Billy and for Billy to immediately rebuke that comfort. Don’t touch me, I’m not a baby, leave me alone! Neither of them say anything, and eventually Susan takes the lead to the clothing department. She tries to prod Billy into picking things out for himself. It just makes him think of all the things at Cheryl’s house and Neil’s apartment he’ll never see again. Longing for the t-shirts Mom had bought him, his earrings, his Walkman force him to wander deeper into the clothing racks to disappear. The thought occurs to him to slip into the center of one and just… hide. It’s not something he’s done since he was young. Hiding from Mom and watching her walk by, jumping out to scare her. She always knew he was there. She was always keeping him safe. Trying to.

Breathing hard with his fists tight at his sides, he drifts around Susan’s orbit to calm down. He never loses sight of her red hair teased high. She’s something out of an old Sears Roebuck catalogue. Like she should have a polkadot apron on and a vacuum sucking up stars on a Hoover advert. She is… unimposing and kind. At least that’s what Billy has gathered having known her for 24 hours or so. That unimposing attitude begins to grate on him, though. Because he doesn’t care what clothes go on his body. He hasn’t cared for a while now. And no matter how he insists, trying to not snap at her, she just won’t pick out things for him. He has to stalk away from her, claiming to need to use the restroom. In reality, he’s worried he’ll go off like a bomb if he has to stare her pity full in the face for one more second.

Maybe she knows everything. Miss Rennard would have told her some details. Adults have that way with each other. They whisper things behind their hands or mostly-closed doors. Why these things can’t be said around him, Billy doesn’t know. Again, the lack of choice about what happens to him and his life. As he stalks to the bathroom, finding he actually does need it, he reminds himself it could be worse.

He could be back at the foster care center. Where kids of all ages skulk around and cluster in pseudo-gangs, invisible alliances waiting to ensnare and trap. Or the slightly older kids like him who have an edge to them and are bloodthirsty in their rage and betrayal. Wanting to hurt someone back just to feel something again. More than one kid tried to put their hands on him—to fight and to touch him like Neil. It was the first time Billy got into a fight and suffered the consequences since he was a child. Before all this. It was worth it to get those kids off him. Billy knows exactly what those kids would have done if he just stood there and took it.

There is no one in the bathroom when Billy nudges the door open. Two urinals and two stalls. It smells like every men's restroom—cleaning products and piss, one sort of melding into the other. He wrinkles his nose and considers holding it.  _ That _ memory from so long ago is fuzzy in his head. He barely recalls what’d happened. There is no telling how long he and Susan will be out and about, though. It’s best if he just goes now. Use the resource while it’s here. The urinals are squeezed together on the wall with just the one sink. Billy steps up to the urinal closest to the sink and gets his fingers on the button and zip of his shorts around the time the pressure in the bathroom changes. The door opens.

He doesn’t whip his head around like a startled animal. He does keep very still, glances up in the mirror to see if it shows him who has appeared behind him. Just a man. Tall in khakis and a shirt with a collar, a breast pocket. He has neatly styled black hair and a smooth face. Maybe someone’s dad. He has that tiredness under his eyes and the slight stoop to his shoulders that speaks of kids climbing all over him. It reminds him of Mom in a way. That brief thought stops him from panicking when the man meets his eyes in the mirror and nods hello. And then steps up to the free urinal. Why he doesn’t just wait for Billy to finish or use a stall, Billy doesn’t know. There isn’t enough air in here, enough space between their bodies for Billy to breathe. His eyes betray him and look down even as he has his dick in hand to piss. It’s not his own dick he stares at.

It’s the first time he’s seen a grown man since everything had happened. First time he’s been near enough to a grown man to smell the cigarette smoke on him and his cologne. Mr Mayfield doesn’t smoke. Neither does Susan. Maxine does, but she tries to hide it. He’s not yet seen her smoke. But walking past her room this morning, it smelled of burning pine. So she smokes with the window open and sprays something in a frantic bid to cover it up. She should just go loiter outside somewhere if she wants to smoke. But now that dusty, bitter scent crawls up Billy’s nose. And he’s right back in Neil’s apartment, in Neil’s lap, squirming with hands reaching down, down, down between his legs. 

Billy stands there staring hard at the man’s soft dick in his hand, pissing without a care. That’s about the furthest thing from Billy’s mind. What he’d come in here to do. His mind is a bastard and quick to play games with him. Can’t help but compare this stranger to the one other adult cock he knows so well. His stomach drops out when he thinks of the weight of it in his hand. Touching him and pushing inside him. The salt and musk of a man. The scratch of his body hair, which Billy doesn’t have yet. But he itches sometimes under his arms and in his underwear, so it’s coming. Some of the bigger kids had hair already. They were rather proud of it. Billy doesn’t see the appeal.

Done with a shake, the man pays him no mind and tucks himself back into his briefs, zips up his khakis. Now Billy’s head almost swivels around to follow him to the sink. Because he can’t get the image out of his head, the insides of his eyelids burned with it. Velvet skin and veins and softness despite Billy knowing it could be hard. He’s too aware of his own skin stretched over him. Excitement and dread war with him—dread that is always there, excitement he cannot control, forces itself onto him as it boils up black and terrible from his memories. Of enjoying what Neil did to him. Of asking sometimes for Neil to touch him. Towards the end anyway. What kind of kid does that? What kind of sick, twisted person does that?

Billy doesn’t move until he’s alone again. He’s fragile all over, taped up pieces of his mask about to peel off and shatter his false bravery right on the linoleum floor of the bathroom. For the two months at the foster care center, he’d survived on his own bullshit. Of telling himself he wasn’t fucked up like the other kids. That he was better than them, didn’t cry himself to sleep or flinch from every hand that reached for him. That what happened wasn’t that bad, that he was already over it. It was nothing.

He can’t meet his eyes in the mirror as he washes his hands. He is lucky the man just now had looked nothing like Neil. Billy knows he would have bolted right out of this bathroom, right out of the store, and just run until he couldn’t run anymore. Billy knows as he avoids Susan’s greeting smile that he’ll be thinking about Neil and what he just saw for the rest of the day. Susan does not remark on how quiet he is. But her concern buffets him like static electricity. He’s waiting for the spark.

The spark happens that night. Bottom of his closet full of school supplies, hangers loaded with new clothes freshly washed, he lies in the dark and stares at the ceiling. On the nightstand under the window, a new Walkman sits there with earbuds plugged into it. Susan snuck it into their shopping, surprised him with it in the car. Billy thanked her quietly, wanting nothing more than to curl away from her smile. It was a nice thing to do. Only Billy doesn’t have tapes to listen to, and he’d turned down Mr Mayfield’s offer to borrow some of his. Mr Mayfield likes the oldies stuff Neil did. Stuff that was always playing on the radio in the pick-up or from a radio in the kitchen when Neil would cook. The idea of lying here and filling his head with his father’s music is enough to wind his throat up tight. Makes him what to scream through it. He’s about to roll over and shove his face in a pillow when a muffled sound reaches him through the walls.

Maxine’s bedroom is on the other side of Billy’s closet. The house is old, asymmetrical. The two bedrooms up here are on the right side of the house, parlour and living room on the left with the galley kitchen squeezed into the back. The walls are thin, not to mention all the rooms had once been connected through doors. Billy lifts his head from his pillow and blinks at the door that is painted and boarded over beside his closet. There are shelves there, now. Places for him to put things he doesn’t own anymore. He sits up when he hears the noise again. A quiet moan. Something that tickles his brain and draws him out of bed, across the hardwood floor, until he’s curled up against the boarded door.

“El, come on, you gotta be quiet. My mom is a light sleeper, she’ll hear you.”

Maxine. And a friend. Judging by the moan, it must be that girl who’d held her hand this morning. Frowning hard enough to wrinkle his brow, Billy presses an ear to the boards. And waits.

Tense quiet. And then another gasp of noise. Again, maybe escaping the lines of a palm slapped to her mouth. The girl with the bob and impossibly dark eyes. She’d found Billy through the moving car and the distance and knew he saw them. So her and Maxine are fooling around. He assumed as much after watching their fingers lace together in secret. He isn’t sure he’s ever met someone like him before. A gay person. Maybe Maxine likes boys, too, but right now she’s fooling around with a girl in secret. Billy wonders what they’re doing. His memory supplies him with plenty of things. He needs only to omit rock hard cocks from the memories and plays himself a pretty picture. Curled up against the door with his thighs to his chest, he wiggles a hand down and palms the front of his underwear.

Boys at the foster care center had taught him about this. Cornering him when the adults were busy and asked him why he was there. What someone did to him. And almost like welcoming him into their flock, they taught him all sorts of things. How to touch himself and make himself feel good. Only Neil had ever touched him, only to ever make himself feel good. The memories of the motel and Neil fucking him were so fresh at the time. Billy knew it felt good in some way. Not like the older boys were making it out to be. Two of them dragged him into the bathroom and pulled their pants down to show him. What it looked like when someone their age got hard. When they come.

That’s around the same time they’d tried to force him to his knees on the bathroom floor and use his mouth. He punched and cursed and kicked until they backed away from him. He bloodied both their noses. They called him crazy and a fag before running away. It’s almost more unpleasant to remember that than to think about Neil. He doesn’t want to think about that, though. Billy’s face screws up, frustrated, and he shakes the memories away. Maxine and her friend—El, whatever kind of name that is—don’t have the bodies he likes. But whatever they’re doing is familiar, curls a cloying finger in his brain and says, ‘Come hither.’ So he presses himself flush to the door and ignores the shame heating his face as he listens to them. Rocking his hips into his hand all the while.

Another gasp, and a quiet voice whimpering, “Max,” gets him shoving his palm harder to himself. He won’t reach under his briefs to touch bare skin. It’s not what he wants, just wants to rut into his hand until it feels good. It’s different, now. Something has changed in him, and he was too caught up in Neil’s obsession with him to tune into it. It felt good, in a way, to have Neil touch him in the motel. By that time, Billy was used to hands groping and pinching him, fingers pushing inside him for no other purpose than his father’s pleasure. Billy never got anything out of it. Until the last time. Through his misery and panic, he knew his body enjoyed the physicality of it. And with so many boys around him, the care center segregated by gender for obvious reasons, it made it easy for him to discover the difference.

Not unlike all the times he’d seen Neil’s dick, his gets hard and wet at the tip, too. It’s messy and gross and tastes bad. He was too curious one night in his bed at the center, knew to stay quiet while gathering sticky moisture at the sensitive head of his dick to lick his fingers clean. Comparing it to Neil was all he had, is still all he has. But at the time and still now, he doesn’t want to think about Neil. He thinks about Maxine and her friend on the other side of the wall. Their bodies get wet, too, but he doesn’t know what that tastes like. Doesn’t care to know, just wants to see them pet and squeeze and touch each other. He shouldn’t for so many reasons. Maxine is his cousin. Maxine is a girl. She has nothing he wants. But he wants to see, and he’s too afraid to dig into why. So he just remembers the things he’s seen on old VHS tapes. Girls and their pink, flowery bodies. What made them feel good.

His hips twitch against his hand all too soon. It’s over, sticky in his underwear and the whole of between his legs tingly. Burning cold like ice on his skin when he gathers it from around his tip to look at in the moonlight. Clear stickiness makes strands between his fingers when Billy rubs them together. Girls do this, too. He’s seen it. Maxine is probably the one touching El. Would she do this? Pull her fingers away from El’s pussy, out of it, and show her? Make El lick her clean? Billy flushes all the hotter with shame and shoves his fingers in his mouth. He could just cry, but it feels good. Familiar. Their bodies are familiar to him in a forbidden sort of way. He wants to see what they do to each other. What forbidden knowledge they have and use on each other.

Two weeks before school starts, no more warmed up to the Mayfields than on his first day, he gets his chance. It’s a humid, soupy Saturday night. It’s late, he should be in bed. The distant snap of a belt and leather across his backside makes him reconsider holding it in when he needs to use the bathroom. So he doesn’t hold it, slips from his bedroom at the front of the house to seek out the bathroom with its little window above the tub. Maxine’s bedroom is sandwiched between the bathroom and Billy’s room. Even in here, through the tiles on the wall, he hears her and El cheating their bedtime, too.

They’re older, though, and Susan is thrilled Maxine has a girlfriend. Not the way Billy understands the word. Susan thinks they’re just friends. Billy knows better. Has overheard them making out and fucking a few times now. Has even caught them kissing just now. When he snuck past Maxine’s bedroom door, it was cracked open. They were in sleep clothes. Sitting beside each other on Maxine’s bed with their hands on each other’s thighs. His skin is tight all over, heart thundering hard in his chest. He needs to get back there. To see.

Dragging his damp hands on his sleep shirt, Billy minds the floorboards as he stalks his way through the darkness. The boards in the middle of the floor, the high-traffic areas, betray anyone stepping on them. Tucking close to the walls and archways, Billy is silent in the house. Not even Susan will pick him out as she and Mr Mayfield sleep in the basement. And she is a light sleeper, had knocked on Billy’s door when she heard him struggling through a nightmare. He just barked at her to leave him alone, that he was fine, before burying his head under a pillow to bite back screams. No one will come running tonight. The basement door is loud when it opens, and Billy only needs to scamper back to his room if he hears it creak open. For now, through the sliver of light pouring into the dark living room, the sight before him is all his.

Their exposed breasts don’t interest him. He catches them with light in his eyes just as Maxine tugs El’s shirt off and immediately presses her mouth to a tiny breast. Her hands ghost up and down El’s ribs, venturing farther down to caress her bare thighs. Maxine is shirtless, too, her breasts fuller. Hers interest Billy even less, and he tries not to look at her at all. They’re still sitting up, clothed from the waist down, although only in panties. Billy remembers that. The squeeze of white cotton around him. Neil’s oily voice talking to him. Treating him like a girl. They are the memories he hates most of all, tries not to let their spindly fingers claw at the simmering pleasure in his gut. He doesn’t want to touch them. He doesn’t want to be them. Just watch. He’s used to watching.

El is shy when her small hands pet over Maxine’s hair. It’s loose from the braid Maxine had worn today, waves from the weaving still imprinted in the locks. Short fingers dive through those waves, and El crushes Maxine to her chest. Wanting to be closer. Billy grinds envy between his teeth as he watches Maxine pull her mouth away and smile up at El. They like each other so much. El returns that smile and even looks away. Shy. Her face lights up with pink in her cheeks when Maxine pushes her down. Their legs hang off the side of the bed when Maxine joins her. She doesn’t slip El’s panties off, just reaches a hand down to squeeze her through the cotton. Drawing the tips of her fingers up and down again and again. Billy remembers that, too. The weight of a hand fondling his dick, no matter that it wouldn’t get hard. Neil touched him just to satisfy his own pleasure.

What would this be like, he wonders? To have someone reach for him and for him to want their hands on him. He cannot imagine himself in El’s position. It would be too much, sours his pleasure just to think about it. With someone slightly above him like Maxine is with El, the scent of cigarettes and engine grease would rise unbidden into his nose. Depending on what the other boy looked like, he might see Neil. Might hear Neil. No, no he wants to do what Maxine is doing. He wants to watch someone shiver and tremble while he explores them. Maxine’s teeth are in her bottom lip as she glances down the pale expanse of her girlfriend, digging her thumb into the wet spot in her panties. El’s legs twitch and then bend at the knees. The whole of her soft pinkness would be exposed if not for her panties. Maxine still doesn’t take them off, instead slides her fingertips under the elastic at El’s hips. Teasing.

“You want more?” She murmurs above El’s blissful face, her voice so husky it makes Billy’s stomach drop out. “Come on, El, you know I like it when you ask. Pretty please, baby? For me?”

Maxine tilts her head the other way, expression unreadable to Billy, when El opens her eyes. She’s flushed to her hairline and even in her little ears. Shoulders scrunching up, she bites back a shy smile and actually meets Maxine’s eyes. She is shy all over except in that way. It has Billy’s stomach dropping out again like he’s missed a step going down stairs. Until this point, his hands have remained tight to his thighs. Stubby fingers almost clawing are himself. The growing heat and ache between his legs moves his hands for him. Both shove past the elastic of his own briefs as he balances his weight on bent knees and finally brushes shaking fingers over his own flesh. 

On Maxine’s bed, El arches her hips into Maxine’s hand barely touching her and whimpers, “Please Max, I want you.” Her hips shake and then drop back to the bed when she knows Maxine wants more. “Touch me?”

Maxine’s face barely contains her grin when she bows down to kiss El’s shyness away. Permission given and pleaded—how genuine it is, something Billy doesn’t understand, that El wants this and isn’t afraid—Maxine doesn’t withhold any longer. Their heads are tucked together, almost kissing when El jumps and lets out a fluttering moan. It’s familiar, a delicate thing. The sound of it plays games with the little hairs on the back of Billy’s neck until it stings. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep quiet as he grabs crudely at himself, one hand holding the length of him with the fingers of the other play slippery games with his head. He’s already wet and strains his ears to pick up the slick squelch of Maxine’s fingers. 

He gives a gush into his own fingers when he hears it. El reacts in the same moment, snapping her hips up. Maxine’s hand is only shifting angles and vagueness under El’s panties. Billy knows enough, has seen enough, to know she has a finger or two inside her. That had felt good, too, the last time Neil did that to him. It was only after the fact, after he was alone, that he could face it. The shame of knowing he would have enjoyed it if not for the fear. Because Neil drugged him to get him to that point. Even now Billy shudders and rocks his body into his hands, imagining the pressure of something inside him. If he detaches it from Neil, from another person, and just revels in the sensation, he finds pleasure in it. It’s nice to watch too, and Billy almost wishes Maxine would take El’s panties off. It dumps more shame on him, but he wants to see.

Panting hard with a hand over her mouth to stifle it, El starts to rock Maxine’s bed with her movements. From his dark position in the hallway, Billy can’t quite tell if they’re moving together or if El is fucking herself on Maxine’s fingers. Either way, she chases something Billy has only known a few times. And woken up to more recently, briefs sticky on the inside and his dick sort of hurting from rubbing himself into the cotton in his sleep. Billy recognizes the way she shakes, the way the movements of her hips start to falter. This whole time, her dark brown eyes have squeezed shut to block out everything. With a gasp behind her hand, El’s eyes fly open wide and stare down the length of her as she comes. She has to catch the squeak she makes when Maxine does it just right for her, making her eyes flutter. When they stop fluttering, the haze clears from those bottomless pools. El sees beyond her body, beyond the light of Maxine’s room.

She sees him in the crack of the door, hands frozen where they’re stuffed down his briefs.

Maxine picks up on the change immediately. How El goes still and stares hard with her expression going blank. The tendons in her neck are taut like strings on a bow when Maxine sits up, slips her hand out of El’s panties.

“What? El, what’s wrong?”

El doesn’t move, doesn’t speak when Maxine whips her head around. She doesn’t need to, because Maxine sees him, too. Red sinks into the center of her face, all her softness for El gone. She snatches up her sleep shirt and gives Billy enough time to save some face, to rip his hands out of his underwear. She is across the room and on him in barely two strides, her door slamming into the wall and making a ruckus. She grabs his upper arms with a snarl on her face, fury about to make her hair stand up like a cat. Behind her, El slips her shirt back on too and wobbles on her feet as she dashes to the hallway. Meanwhile, Maxine struggles with Billy.

Heart in his throat and about to explode, Billy wiggles and stomps his feet on the floor for purchase. To run away, to escape the harsh hold on him. He sees it, now, the times Neil had punished him. Pressing him flat into the bed and beating him no matter the circumstances. No matter Billy’s begging and apologizing. He freezes under Maxine’s hands and stares up at her. Never one to back down from a challenge even when he is bound to lose. Disgust paints her face, now, and she shakes her head while watching him. At the back of the house, the basement stairs start to creak. Someone is coming.

“I can’t believe you, you gross little shithead,” Maxine hisses at him. She shakes him and spits out, “Did you get your little dick off watching us? I hope you did, because Mom is about to kick you to the fucking curb after I tell her what you were doing.”

Billy says nothing with his voice locked in his throat. If he tries to speak, he knows he’ll just start screaming. Every inch of him is ice under the searing rays of Maxine’s spitfire fury. He has never felt so cold. El is with them in the hallway as silent as a mouse. She rests a hand on Maxine’s trembling wrist despite the Mayfields about to walk through the basement door.

“Max… Wait.” El looks at him, her eyes so dark and tired in the shadows of the hallway. The light pouring from Maxine’s bedroom is the only thing keeping them out of the dark. There is something in her, Billy sees it. Something hollow. She turns her eyes from Billy’s petrified face to Maxine’s. That hollowness disappears as she squeezes Maxine’s wrist. “Just tell your parents he was snooping on us. Don’t tell them about… what he was doing.”

“What?” She spits, turning a smaller snarl El’s way. “Why the hell should I do that? He’s a nasty little pervert!”

El’s expression shifts in a tiny way that Billy cannot read. The girls speak a silent language he does not understand, Maxine insisting with her scowl and El insisting right back. In that silent way, they come to an agreement of sorts. Billy’s panic has calmed enough to let him wonder what the story is behind El’s leniency towards him. She has no reason to show him mercy. He isn’t exactly kind to Maxine or the cluster of her friends. And yet El wants to spare him the rod. Maxine relents in the end and turns her twitching upper lip Billy’s way. When she shoves him back a step, his skin aches where she’d gripped him. There won’t be bruises, but he’ll be tender.

That scowl twists her lips yet when someone flicks a light on. It’s Mr Mayfield first, Susan peeking over the slope of his shoulder.

“Billy? Girls? What’s going on?”

Maxine’s face hardens in that brief second. Glaring at Billy with everything in her. Wanting so badly to throw him to the wolves. She bites it all back, pinches her eyes shut, and then turns to her parents.

“I caught Billy spying on us,” she snaps. “He was in the hallway watching us through a crack in my door. We were taking our clothes off to change, he saw us naked.”

Maxine only slightly deviates from the truth. At least on what she and El had been doing. Of a similar persuasion, Billy understands why she covers her ass like that. Can’t have Susan and Mr Mayfield find out what they do during their sleepovers. That would probably be a bigger scandal than the weird cousin from California playing peeping tom. When Billy meets the two pairs of eyes waiting for him, it’s that much harder to stare back at them. He can’t back down. He has to own this.

“Is that true, Billy?” Mr Mayfield asks him.

No excuses. No lies.

“Yes, sir.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Mr Mayfield shares a sigh and a look with Susan. They have a silent conversation, too. Just like Maxine and El. They come to a silent decision about this, too. Mr Mayfield crosses the living room and rests a gentle, heavy hand on Billy’s shoulder. A brief frown crosses Mr Mayfield’s face when the warmth of his hand almost burns Billy. He is ice cold from adrenaline.

“Come on, let’s go back to your room. I wanna talk to you for a second, okay?”

Susan gathers the girls up and urges them into Maxine’s room. She pauses outside the door and watches Mr Mayfield shuffle away with Billy. Billy doesn’t look back, can only look forward as every wisp of heat and life drains from him. It leaves only the icy fingers of dread behind. Already he reminds himself not to scream. That when Mr Mayfield beats him with a hand or maybe Billy’s own belt—Mr Mayfield shuffles along in his underwear and a robe—that he needs to count every strike. Otherwise, Mr Mayfield will start over, and Billy will have to suffer that much longer.

He’s trying to keep his breathing calm and not freak out when Mr Mayfield nudges him into his bedroom. Billy does them the favor of turning on the lamp sitting on his nightstand. It’s better if Mr Mayfield doles out the punishment with the light on. Billy will be less likely to play tricks on himself and imagine Neil here instead. Billy expects the pressure of his door shutting but finds that Mr Mayfield shuffles right on in. The door stays open. Billy isn’t sure what to make of that. So, what? So Maxine and the others can hear Billy count? With his knees just shy of touching his mattress, Billy fists his hands at his sides. A belting is one thing. The humiliation is another. His throat hurts from how badly he wants to scream.

Sighing, Mr Mayfield helps himself to Billy’s bed and sits. He offers the stoic, panicking boy a smile, and then pats the space beside him.

“Let’s talk real quick. I’m not mad at you for what you did, Billy, and neither is Susan. I just wanna talk and set some things straight with you. Okay?”

Breaths still tightly controlled and measured, Billy’s head jerks through a few nods. He eyes the space beside Mr Mayfield’s heavy, round body and knows he has to sit. He steels himself for whatever happens. Not that Mr Mayfield is Neil. Not that any adult man will touch him like Neil. It’s just… a lot. He just wants everything to stop and for none of this to have happened. Especially him watching the girls. In hindsight, of course it was a terrible thing to do. Why did he do it in the first place? The pleasure it brought him is long gone, certainly not worth this humiliation and discomfort. Billy tries to sit as lightly as possible and leave as much space between him and Mr Mayfield as he can get away with. He only exhales when Mr Mayfield just sits facing the door with him. Not touching him.

He begins softly, voice low just for them, “Your social worker, uh…”

Billy has to swallow a few times to grind out, “Miss Rennard.”

“Oh that’s right, Amy. Well, when Amy was talking to us to arrange for you to live here, she… explained a little bit. About what happened to you. About some things to expect from you.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Billy has suspected all along that Miss Rennard told the two of them about what happened. Not everything. They would only know what Billy’s file says. That Mom had walked in on Neil fucking him. That Neil drugged him to do it. Only he knows the full story, refuses to speak to any counselor or doctor who asks him questions. Shame and disgust bind his lips and throat tightly shut. But what does Mr Mayfield mean by ‘expectations?’

“Like what?” Comes out of him so small. Afraid.

Mr Mayfield sighs.

“She warned you might get violent or destructive. That we should try to talk to you and not physically discipline you, which please trust me when I say we would never hurt you, Billy. We don’t believe in that sort of thing, uhhh…”

“Belting?”

Mr Mayfield’s voice is heavy with sorry when he sighs, “Yes, that sort of thing. We would never hurt you, I hope you know that. You don’t have to like us or be happy about living here. But we’ll never hurt you. Okay?”

He nods, can’t even manage to make his mouth form the words he hates so much. Yes, sir.

“Amy also told us about some… things to look out for. That you might…” The air between them, around them, tenses. Like everyone waiting for fireworks to go off. “That you may have certain… tendencies and that you would be more curious than, say, Maxine was when she was your age. Amy said it was typical for children who went through what you did to be um… Well that you might take what you know and… explore or experiment. That you might act on what you experienced.”

Mr Mayfield’s vagueness has Billy grinding his teeth. Just rip the bandaid off, for crying out loud.

“I’m sorry,” he forces out. “I won’t do it again.”

In Billy’s peripheral vision, he watches Mr Mayfield nod. He sits forward and clasps his hands between his knees, looking down at them.

“Billy if you… if you’re struggling with what happened and you need to talk, you can always come to me or Susan. We don’t blame you for what happened, we know none of it was your fault. It’s despicable what happened.”

Billy just wishes he would shut up. His eyes burn as he stares straight ahead. Like Neil is here, interrogating him.

When Billy says nothing, Mr Mayfield sighs again. He is full of sighs.

“It’s late and I won’t bother you about it anymore. I think Maxine would appreciate it if you apologize to her and Jane, if you say what you said to me just now. I think that would make everything square between everybody.” Mr Mayfield sits back up, looks around, and then carefully lifts Billy’s Walkman from his nightstand. He turns to Billy, waits for wet eyes to meet his, and then waggles the black plastic in his hand. “I’m going to take this back to our room downstairs. But I’ll give it back to you tomorrow if you don’t tell Susan I let you have it back so soon. Okay?”

It could be worse. It could be so much worse. This is a cakewalk compared to everything he’s dealt with until now. Is that all Mr Mayfield is going to do? Take his music away? That’s a punishment his mom would give him. He thinks of Cheryl’s house and running around treating it like his own little world. Of finding Mom and Cheryl outside sunning themselves or sipping lemonade to stay cool. How long has it been since the last time he sat with her and fell asleep to her breathing? It used to knock him right out. That or her petting his hair, drawing her fingertips over his forehead. He has never missed her so terribly. Missing a part of himself. And he needs, needs, needs Mr Mayfield to go away before Billy makes a further fool out of himself.

“Yes, sir,” he says with his voice paper thin.

Mr Mayfield hesitates for a moment more. A flinch sort of works its way through his body. Like he’ll reach out and touch Billy. To comfort him, only Billy would find it anything but comforting. Billy would scoot down the bed to deter him, but habit roots him to the spot. He’s not free until Mr Mayfield is done with him. Mr Mayfield doesn’t have to belt him for Billy to treat this like every other punishment. Until he’s alone, he can’t decompress. Men don’t cry.

“Okay then… Well…” Mr Mayfield groans softly when he stands. He shuffles to Billy’s open door, the parlor in shadows beyond. He is on the correct side of Billy’s door, leaving, when he takes the handle and says, “Good night, Billy. Please think about what we talked about. And please apologize to Maxine and Jane tomorrow morning.”

Like a bobblehead, he gives a jerky nod. Mr Mayfield flashes him a smile and then shuts the door. It clicks when it latches, but Billy doesn’t move. Back straight and fists tight on his thighs, he forces his breaths to remain calm as he waits for the house to settle. The room next to his is quiet. Not even music. He almost wishes he could catch Maxine and El talking about all this. Surely they will. Surely Maxine will bitch about covering for Billy. Somewhat. Billy would like to know El’s reasoning for leniency, too, but he may never know. He hates to think where he would be right now if Maxine had told the truth. ‘Expectation,’ right. That apparently he’s now destined to become some sort of pervert. Someone who stalks outside young girls’ bedrooms and gets off on watching them.

Throat burning with screams and stomach acid, Billy pushes himself from his bed. He snatches up a pair of jeans from the floor. He’d meant to throw them in the dirty laundry, can’t fall out of habit of keeping a spotless room. The bed is made in a second with a few flicks of his wrists. That done, Billy shoves his feet into clean socks and a pair of shoes. He stands ready in front of the window that leads to the porch. Squatting down, Billy curls his hands around the bottom edge of the nightstand and picks it up. If he drags the heavy, wooden thing across the floor, someone will hear. Someone will come back upstairs to investigate. So he hauls the nightstand away from the window with one heft of all the strength in him. Path to the window clear, Billy shoves the pane and screen up. Even inside the porch, the night is thick with humidity despite the darkness. Frogs and bugs own the night, fill it with their screams.

Cherry Lane is dark unlike the neighborhood he’d grown up in. And he knew that whole area like the back of his hand, could get home blindfolded probably. He has lived here for a little over two weeks and still doesn’t have a grasp of this place. Hawkins is tiny. It doesn’t help that he never leaves his room unless Susan coaxes him out. To watch TV with her in the living room or out to run errands. She has a job doing something. Both the Mayfields work. Maybe she’s taken off work to get him settled in. Something. He doesn’t care about any of that as his sneakers hit the pavement and he walks.

He thinks about his mom. Neil. Everything that has been taken away from him. His life, the things he thought were so certain, his fucking childhood. He is older than Maxine somehow and yet painfully young. Forbidden knowledge is heavy in his head, grows heavier all the time. It’s stuck in him, and he can’t keep the door shut on it. He knows that but can’t figure out how to tell anyone. He can’t figure out how to tell anyone that this  **is** all his fault. He’s the one who let Neil in. He’s the one who let Neil into the house when he knew Neil was bad, who begged him to come back, who ignored Mom trying to protect him. He let Neil do all those things to him, never said a word, asked for Neil to touch him. Even when Mom tried to protect him, he threw it all back in her face and picked Neil over her. Billy threw her away.

And he’ll never see her again.

Coming to a stop in the middle of the street, no sidewalk, he slaps his hands to his face and sucks in a trembling, wet breath. For the first time in Billy’s life, backed into a corner and afraid and hurt and alone, he doesn’t stand there and take it. He bolts into the night and runs as hard and as far as his legs will carry him. He thinks, with his face wet and teeth gritting over sobs, that he could run until the earth ends. Until he hits the sea. And then he could keep going until it was over his head and he could drown and end all of this. It’s too far, he knows that, but he runs in the direction he thinks is west anyway. Leaping over fences and dashing through backyards, he winds his way into the woods until darkness swallows him and he is amongst the creatures of the night.


	7. Chapter 7

Billy has only been fourteen for a day when Tommy Hagan finally works up the nerve to slap Billy’s books out of his hands at his locker. Tommy Hagan and Steve Harrington have been eyeing him since day one when the rumor mill had worked its magic. Everyone who was anyone knew Billy was new in town. A little bit of sunny California in their little town. Only Billy isn’t sunny, and everyone found that out real quick.

Tommy and Steve finally building up the courage to get their licks in must be why they’re here. Billy’s locker isn’t anywhere near Tommy and Steve’s lockers. They’re right next to each other thanks to the alphabetical rule of all things. The first time Billy caught wind of them, the pair that apparently ‘rule’ this school, he was ever more thankful that Mom changed his last name. If he were Billy Hargrove instead of Billy Prince, he’d be stuck right between those assholes. Hagan, Hargrove, and Harrington. So it’s a miracle he’s avoided them this long. But he has American History with Steve. And when Steve isn’t passing notes to his flavor of the week, he is all eyes on Billy. And it’s not a friendly look, either.

An arm loops around his shoulders, Steve being a fucking inch taller than him, and then his smooth voice simpers, “Sorry about that, buddy, sometimes Tommy just doesn’t know his own strength. You know how it is.”

Billy elbows Steve in the belly for his troubles, slaps his locker shut, and then turns to glare at Steve’s wince.

“Hey man, what’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Billy says calmly back. He takes the one step separating them, almost smiles when Steve flinches back on his toes like a boxer. Chin held high, never backing down, Billy points out, “Unless you wanna be my problem? Didn’t you hear through the grapevine, Harrington? You shouldn’t fuck with me.”

School has only been in session for two months. They’re fourteen year olds, so what amounts to a ‘badass’ is someone who skips class and curses. Not Billy. He beat some kid’s nose bloody, knocked a tooth out, when he and a couple of goons tried to back Billy into a corner. They thought it would be cute to tease Billy about his hair and his big ears. A few of them even had scissors, not that they would have done anything with them. Billy didn’t give them a chance. If they wanted to look tough, they fucked that up the moment the first kid nearly shit himself and ran away at the sight of blood. None of the four boys tattled on him. Somehow. But after that everybody gave him the wide berth they should have from the start. He’s not here to make friends and be popular. He doesn’t even want to be here. But he never has a choice. 

Behind Billy, Tommy jeers, “Uh oh, we stepped on the Prince’s toes, better watch out, Stevie, you’ll be next.”

Tommy says it like a joke, but Steve leans away from Billy in his face. Actually scrunches down for a second before he returns Billy’s glare.

“You’re just a thug. I’m not scared of you.”

The hardness in Billy’s eyes is just as effective at cowing Steve as it is adults. Even teachers scolding him eventually give up. No one can stare him down. It’s the one gift Neil has given him—devil eyes. Grunting under his breath, done playing puffed chests and jutted chins with this child, Billy mushes Steve away from him with a hand in the center of that thin chest. Steve will never be a big guy. Tall and lanky, big hands like a puppy yet to grow into them. His hands are bigger than Billy’s, which Billy doesn’t need to think about right now.

Steve trips and stumbles away with something like grace, and Billy watches him until he comes to a stop. Scoffing again, Billy turns to the other stooge. Tommy is all cocky grins until Billy steps toe-to-toe with him next. Tommy is stupid, though, and bumps his chest to Billy’s instead of backing down. Like a dog jumping and playing with a cat only to be scratched on the nose. Which is exactly what Billy does.

His left jab sometimes swings wide if he gets too wild with it. Sometimes the other guy ducks. Not Tommy. He takes the flat of Billy’s knuckles straight to his cheek, bounces his head off the lockers, and then spins around to fall on his face. Billy shakes the impact out of his fist, squeezes his fingers to his palm a few times to pop his joints. From behind him, almost like a squealing girlfriend, Steve scrambles forward to scoop Tommy up from the floor. He’d have an easier time mopping the other teen up, since he’s basically a puddle. Not quite knocked out. Billy would have needed a double tap. The locker probably hurts more. Tommy smacked himself right in his temple. It probably smarts.

Billy takes his time picking his things up from the floor. What had started this whole mess. Tommy sits up by the time Billy turns to leave. He doesn’t care if he’s late. He’s the black sheep of the school, but he is not without his charms. And his math teacher is a young lady, very green to teaching, and she is weak to his stare. It makes his skin crawl, how she flusters and forgets her train of thought when he stares at her. He could stop doing it. But he likes to see how far people will go to be curious about him. She’s not a predator or anything. She’s not like Neil. She’s just weak.

Regarding his fellow teens on the floor, Steve staring up at him with irritation twisting his mouth, Billy drawls, “Told you you shouldn’t fuck with me. Remember that, or next time it’ll be your pretty face, Harrington. Adios, dickhead one and two.”

They learn their lesson. Somewhat. Sort of like a pair of dogs that don’t know when to quit, they orbit Billy with mockery and empty words. Tommy is the mouthpiece. Motor mouth always writing checks the three of them knows he can’t cash. Billy sometimes wonders if Steve is the brains behind it all. If Steve is the signature on those checks. It hurts. A little bit. That these idiots don’t know anything about him and just pick him out as a target for their bullying. It’s like he’s back at the foster care center and snarling and prowling just like all the other kids. Just trying to survive. They make school annoying for him. Life at the Mayfield house isn’t much easier.

After the whole… thing with him spying on Maxine and El and getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Billy had only given himself one option. Stoic silence. He can’t get in trouble if he keeps to himself. So breakfast is silence from him. Dinner is silence. No one ever has to come to him to tell him lights out, because his door is already shut and the light is already out when someone reaches him. He doesn’t need to be told these things. No matter Billy’s shame over being caught and knowing what he did was wrong, he can’t stop straining his ears to listen in on Maxine. He still masturbates to the images of them in his head sometimes. When it’s too much, whenever El is over for a weekend, he escapes through the window and just roams Hawkins.

So long as he stays off the roads and keeps to the woods, the junkyard, no one will bother him. He’d almost gotten caught by one of the four or five idiot cops, but he gave the lazy pig the slip. Susan and Mr Mayfield have no reason to trust or like him. Not after the incident. Billy won’t give them any more reasons to put a target on him or send him back to California. To the foster care system, which will kill him for sure. As much as he wants to go home, he knows that’s not an option. He won’t be able to go back until he’s 18. At the soonest. Cheryl isn’t family, so he can’t live with her. And Mom is… probably going to jail for…

“Shit,” Billy curses, smacking his head into the bus seat behind him.

He thinks about her when he’s alone and missing her. It’s a week before Christmas, his first Christmas without her. His first birthday without her hadn’t been a fucking picnic either. He was an idiot and loitered around the phone in the kitchen, hoping she would call. That someone would call. But of course not. She’s in jail or holding or whatever. For what happened. So now, when he needs to escape his thoughts and Maxine and everything, he takes to the broken down bus in the junkyard. Especially now that it's so cold outside. There is evidence of other kids using this place as their stomping grounds. If anyone rolls up on him, he has the sort of reputation now that will send them spinning on their heels to leave. So the bus is his sanctuary to just… sit and vibe when he can’t handle other people. It’s this or let his rage consume him. And then he’ll do something bad, something terrible, and he’ll be even more fucked.

Because he thinks about it. Sometimes. Hurting people. What the boys back at the center had told him. How people hurt them and they felt they deserved to hurt people back. It’s why those boys tried to rape Billy in the bathroom. He knows that, now. It wasn’t a game or something they were doing for fun. For a laugh. They wanted to hurt him just because they could. And as much as he tries not to think about that and become just like them, just like Neil… The thoughts come anyway. They’re not usually about the same person, sometimes not even about a real person. Just a faceless body with his hands on them. Taking what he wants.

He can’t tell anyone. It’s in the same category as his forbidden knowledge and how he still snoops on Maxine fucking her girlfriend. Sighing, he smacks his head into the seat again. Because lately? He’s been thinking about Steve Harrington. A lot. Some of it good. Some of it bad. Some of it so bad he can’t sleep at night and just shivers in his bed until morning. Because if he closes his eyes, he’ll see Steve broken and hurt behind his eyelids. Billy knows he’s the one who did it. So after a sleepless night, he drags himself through school and deliberately avoids Steve. At all costs, which includes complaining about a stomach ache during American History. The one class they have together. Avoiding Steve any other time is easy. They don’t inhabit the same circles or even the same social class. He’s nothing to Steve. So long as it stays that way? Steve is safe from the horrors in Billy’s head.

  
  


Freshman year of high school throws a wrench in Billy’s careful plans of avoiding Steve at all costs. Time and distance don’t snuff out Billy’s thoughts about the other boy. They’re ships passing each other in a small bay. Although they usually only catch a glimpse of their spotlights in the night, Hawkins is just too compact for them to steer clear of each other for long. He has gym with Steve. The worst possible outcome of their schedules. The first day when Billy walks into the gym, floorboards shiny under his sneakers, he sees Steve waiting with everyone else and almost turns to leave. Their teacher, Mr Fink, is the last to arrive and conveniently blocks Billy’s escape. So like always, Billy has no choice but to join the group of fellow teenagers. He makes a point of standing on the opposite side of the cluster from Steve. The more space, the more bodies between them, the better.

The locker room will be a challenge. Billy can either dress up and down faster than everyone else or wait to be the last one. Being the last one carries the implication that he’s somehow shy, or queer, or has a weird dick. So that’s out. Billy makes due with picking a locker farthest from the swinging door, farthest from the showers. So less people will see him, and he won’t see Steve. He won’t get his hopes up that the showers are a relic from the past. That they’ll be excused from showering. They won’t shower today, they’re not even dressing down for this first day. So Billy will just have to make the best of it when it inevitably happens. Because of course it will.

High school classes have their own castes, he discovers. Based on test scores and grades from eighth grade, they’re all placed into different levels of classes. Advanced and then just the normal classes. It should tickle Billy’s pride that he doesn’t share any other class with Steve, because Steve is in the normal classes while Billy is in the advanced ones. Advanced English I, Advanced Algebra I, Advanced Micro Biology, etcetera. But the sense of superiority he would gain if he were normal is absent. This is a blessing, that he and Steve are at different levels. It keeps Steve away from him. Keeps Steve out of the crosshairs of his focus. 

Lunch however…

Tommy and Billy are equally confused when Steve leads the two of them to the lonely table Billy claims for himself. Blue eyes actually meet dark brown and freckles, and the teens share a frown. Steve pays their look no mind, hikes one leg and then the other over the bench connected to the table to sit. He flashes Billy a smile, what’s up, and then turns to Tommy to ask about his schedule. Just… casual conversation. Like the three of them are friends or something. When the last time they were this close, Billy punched Tommy and gave him a wicked bruise on his forehead from slamming into the lockers at Hawkins Middle. So what the fuck is this?

Steve is everywhere after that point. The only reprieve Billy gets is staying in his room. But it’s too nice in the fall to stay inside. Even if the winters are bitter and Billy longs for the San Diego sun. So the junkyard is where he hides away. That doesn’t last, though. Billy usually takes a winding way to walk here from school. Partially because he’s paranoid but also because there are footpaths through the woods and open backyards. And he wants to know where they lead. The love of the outdoors and adventure has yet to leave him barren. Billy figures he may as well make up for lost time. For stolen experiences. 

No matter Billy’s winding paths, though, Steve finds him one day. It’s not too cold out yet. Halloween is tomorrow. Billy is fifteen today. Entire lifetimes span between who he is now and who he’d been just a few years ago. Who that Billy is, he doesn’t know anymore. They all just look like each other. Just bigger each time he sheds himself. He’s already shed himself since meeting Steve. He’s lived here for a year, now. The shock of it has worn off. Billy is settled, now. Knows Hawkins inside and out. Knows where every street goes and how far he can wander through backyards without ever touching pavement. Maybe Steve remembers once having that knowledge, because he wanders into the junkyard with his head up. He makes straight for the bus, like that’s the only place Billy would be.

A knock on the door. Billy always slides it shut behind him.

“Hey um… Billy? It’s Steve Harrington. Can we talk?”

Steve will continue to be a problem unless Billy nips this in the bud. Steve is ignorant, blissfully unaware of how dangerous it is to be alone with him. Billy is only here when he is at his most vulnerable, when he needs to be away from everyone. So Steve following him today is a double blow. Anything could happen, and Billy needs to chase Steve away. To snap at Steve will only rouse the fire in him. Steve has been cordial since the start of this school year. The spark that had made Steve try to bully him in eighth grade is still in there somewhere. Old dogs can learn new tricks, but they remember their old ones, too. 

Making it a point to stomp his feet and shake the bus with each stride, Billy marches to the folding door. He slaps it open, scowl ready, and opens his mouth to tell Steve off.

“I came to say I’m sorry!”

Every mean word come to rally on Billy’s tongue dies where it stands. Instead, he blurts out, “For what?”

Steve winces and claps a hand to the back of his neck, just as quickly slips that hand around to play with his bangs.

“For, uh… for being a shithead to you last year,” Steve sighs, shoulders sagging and hands falling useless to his sides. He picks his head up to meet Billy’s suspicious eyes and then stares somewhere near Billy’s jaw. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About how I treat people like I’m better than them and how that’s not okay, that’s how my dad treats people, and I don’t wanna be like my dad.” Steve shrugs and huffs. “My dad would never apologize to people he’s wronged or whatever, so I’m here to apologize for being a dick to you.”

He sticks his hand out. Billy stares at it.

“What is…?”

Steve nudges his hand closer.

“Truce? Or like… can we start over?” Steve tries to dazzle him with a boyish grin, would be handsome if he were older, and says happily, “Hey, I’m Steve Harrington, nice to meet you. Would you maybe consider the possibility of being my friend?”

“Why?” Billy snaps, glaring at Steve’s hand. “What are you trying to get out of this? What’s your angle?”

Steve’s expression crumbles in an instant, and his hand lowers.

“What? N-no, man, there’s no angle.”

Billy glares harder.

“Did someone put you up to this? What, you and your goons thought this would be funny?” Billy steps down and out of the bus, thinks nothing of the inch difference between them when he barks in Steve’s face, “Are you having a laugh?”

Steve cowers and hunches a shoulder as if to make space between them. But he makes no move to step back or create distance between them. His way of not backing down from a challenge is different than Billy’s. Billy appreciates it all the same, since it takes guts to not run screaming from him.

“I’m not fooling you, Billy, honest man! I-I know you have no reason to believe me or trust me—”

“Yea, no shit, Harrington.”

“—but like, why don’t you answer your own question, then. What would I get out of coming here and apologizing? Like, what could I possibly gain from people at school if they knew I did this?” Steve frowns at him. “What, you think I’d do this just to mess with you on purpose? Humiliate you?”

When Billy keeps his glare up, because duh, Steve blinks at him full of surprise.

“You really think I’d do that?”

Blue eyes roll as Billy scoffs.

“You just said I have no reason to trust or believe you.”

“Touche…” Steve frowns and chews on his lip. He just as quickly perks back up. “Okay, so what do I need to do to get you to believe me? You want me to like… streak at the next football game? Curse a teacher out?” Steve smiles, almost like he’s enjoying this. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”

If Billy were a weaker person, or less hardened, he might take a step away from all that boyish eagerness on Steve’s face. Steve really wants this to work. Enough to get detention for a good long while or even suspended. Well, maybe golden boy Steven Harrington wouldn’t get suspended for flopping his dick across the football field. He’d probably be mentioned in the yearbook later as some sort of class clown or wild man, no real consequences to speak of. His dad had probably done the same when he was Steve’s age, for all Billy knows. 

“Yea, no thanks,” Billy drawls, already turning away and ready to tug the door shut. To keep Steve out. “Your apology was nice, though. Just stay away from me and we can be real peachy keen like.”

Billy is already aware that Steve isn’t the brightest guy. He’s not stupid. He just doesn’t think before he does things sometimes, what with that bleeding heart of his. Billy had seen it during the one altercation between them back in eighth grade. How Steve dropped his big boy act the moment things got serious and sat there scooping Tommy’s dumbass off the floor. Steve is a good person, at the root of all things. Still, Steve darting forward and slapping a hand to the door, refusing dismissal, is not a bright idea.

Face neutral as he glances over his shoulder, Billy says, “Let. Go.”

Steve’s hand flinches away as if burned, but he does not back down. He leans on the door like that will stop Billy. He jerks on it, hinge squeaking something awful, but Steve doesn’t take his weight away. Doesn’t budge. 

“Come on, man, will you just? Give me a chance? I know that’s shitty of me to say, because none of us gave you a chance. I know when you got here, everybody jumped on you and made you out to be this person that you’re not—”

“Excuse you?” Billy spins back around on the narrow stairs and steps right back down them, forcing Steve away with a hand mushed in his chest. “I am exactly who you think I am, Harrington. I beat the shit out of those kids the first month of school to send a message, which you clearly didn’t get.” Billy reaches up and flicks Steve in the forehead, cruelty washing over him like a warm embrace. “You said to me once that you weren’t scared of me? You should be. I’m the baddest mother fucker you’ve ever seen!”

He shoves Steve away one more time, out onto the patch of muddy grass between the bus and a pile of crushed metal. Steve stumbles into the pile, back to a hard place and a rock advancing on him. Billy’s shoes squish in the mud when he comes to a stop. He’s breathing harder than he thinks, tunes into how his fingers are ice cold from adrenaline. All the hate and hurt he avoids combining with Steve clamors to be let out. He’s on the tipping point of something terrible, sees in his mind’s eye crushing the line of his knuckles to Steve’s pretty face and beating him into the mud. It’s all so clear, would be so easy, so Billy roots himself where he stands and refuses to advance. No matter how tightly his shoulders wind up. He won’t attack Steve. He won’t be like Neil. Like  **his** father.

Falling apart so gradually like a hillside giving under rain and gravity, Billy tries his best to keep it together. He never wants to be like Neil. That’s the one thing standing between him and all these terrible thoughts that plague him. That he’s not Neil, he doesn’t have to hurt people just because Neil had hurt him first. The kids at the foster care center were wrong. The lurking desire for suffering and blood bumps along in the shadows of Billy’s mind, always just out of reach of the tiny bit of light left in him. He thinks about Mom. How she would want him to be good, despite everything. She wouldn’t want him to hurt Steve. She’d… probably be happy that someone is trying to see through all his bullshit, all his machismo and bravado, and see the real him. 

Steve picks up on all the shattered pieces of Billy shifting under his skin, behind his eyes. Billy doesn’t mean to let him see. One second he’s steaming mad like a locomotive about to run Steve over. Next he clenches fists and teeth to not scream. Men don’t cry. He wants to. It used to be so easy, crying over little things and Mom being ‘unfair’ about making him eat things he didn’t want to or making him do his homework before watching TV with her. It used to be so easy to feel and understand himself. It’s all messed up now, and all he has left is screaming and fighting and cursing. It will only get worse as time goes on—has only gotten worse as time goes on. Billy sucks a desperate, trembling breath in through his nose before scowling and spinning away from Steve on his heels. He doesn’t walk away, though. Can’t move his feet out of the muddy ruts he’s made for himself.

Behind him, the pile of metal Steve leans on groans a bit. Weight removed.

“Billy…”

“Shut up!” Billy’s shoulders hunch like he’s ready for a smack in the mouth. “Just-just fuck off, Harrington! Get out of here!”

Wet footsteps in the grass.

“I won’t.”

The chill from adrenaline washes over Billy’s entire body. A bucket of ice water upended over his head, trickling down under his clothes, under his skin. Still, he does not turn around. Can’t do much more than stare at the open door of the bus. Steve is close, now. The breeze up on this exposed hill whips around and brings the smell of Steve’s expensive hairspray right under Billy’s nose. Another guy who styles his hair. It’s something Billy has been trying to avoid thinking about for long. Guys don’t really care about their hair, so long as it doesn’t look like total dog shit. Steve cares, though. Billy wishes Steve didn’t care.

“I won’t leave,” Steve says again. His voice is soft, begging without words for Billy to hear him out, to give him a chance. To give peace a chance. “I don’t… I don’t know what brought you here or why you’re a giant asshole to everybody. I think the biggest rumor is that you killed some kid in California but nobody could prove it, but I know that’s all bullshit. You’re just…”

Billy’s heart hammers at the top of his throat. It’s so tight every breath is a struggle. He wants to throw up, but he can’t even do that.

Steve struggles for what to say, to not put his foot in his mouth, when he stumbles through, “You’re just, there’s just something fucked up that happened to you, I think. Like, maybe your parents split up or something bad happened to them. Everybody wants to jump to conclusions and blame you and talk about you behind your back. And you? You let them do it? That right there is bullshit.”

“You don’t know me.”

It’s a weak argument. But it’s bait cast out on a line to see if Steve will take it as the distraction that it is. Steve isn’t the brightest guy—but he’s not stupid.

“Yea, you’re making it real hard to do that, buddy.” Steve sighs. Deflating. But not giving up. He’s that much closer to Billy’s back, coaxing a shiver out of him, when he says, “I won’t admit to having the world’s greatest parents or anything. They’re not the worst, but they’re not the best. I used to act out when they started being around less. Cuz I missed them and wanted them to pay attention to me. I started failing tests and shit last year, apparently almost had to repeat eighth grade. A counselor from the school sat down with me and just… talked to me. About everything I was going through, and he set me straight on a bunch of shit. Like I couldn’t get my head out of the sand to help myself, so he had to pull me out, you know?”

“I don’t want your help,” Billy snaps. It’s a paper-thin excuse. Anything to interrupt Steve and keep the conversation rocky. Maybe Steve will go away. Maybe Billy can drive him away. “I didn’t ask for you to follow me here, and I don’t need help. I’m fine. So just fuck off and leave me alone.”

“Billy…”

A hand rests on his shoulder for barely a breath. Long enough for Billy to notice it, to tense up wild and afraid, and then react on that fear. Sometimes his right jab swings wide, too, like the left. Not this time. He lashes out and catches Steve right in the cheek. He doesn’t stop, rears back at the hip and coils power along that pivot point like the Alvarez boys had taught him so long ago. Punch from your hip, not your shoulder. And Billy does, whipping Steve’s head around with another pop in his other cheek. The pretty boy goes spinning around on his sneakers, but Billy catches him by the front of his shirt after a rotation. Their legs almost tangle as Billy walks Steve backwards, Steve’s feet pretty much dragging and kicking below them. Useless.

Throwing Steve against the pile of metal and then leaning in his face Billy hisses, “Maybe you still have your head up your ass, Harrington, because you’re not listening.” Billy shakes him hard enough to send Steve’s head flopping on his shoulders like a doll. Amber eyes are unfocused when they manage to open, seeing him and yet not. “I don’t need you or anyone else, I don’t need help, so leave me the fuck alone!”

Steve’s head flops back to stare up at the cloudy sky, and he… laughs. A humorless bubble of noise. They’re close enough for Billy to feel it and hear it, Steve’s belly popping with every huff he lets out.

“You are so full of shit, man,” Steve groans. He pops out one more chuckle. “I thought I had it bad, but jeez…”

Billy’s hands tighten in Steve’s shirt. They’re still entirely too close, almost chest-to-chest. Billy should stop this. Should toss Steve on his ass and either leave or just beat Steve until  _ he _ leaves. Billy’s nagging conscience won’t let him do the latter, though. He’s already gone too far by touching Steve a handful of times and then punching him twice. This is becoming dangerous the longer Steve is here.

It’s close, now, the lurking ugliness Neil has left behind in him. No amount of distance or time or swings of a Little League bat can undo it. Billy’s fists tremble where they twist in the front of Steve’s polo. He’s going to hurt Steve, but he doesn’t want to, hates that he’s tried to be good and stay away to keep Steve safe. But Steve is too dumb and stubborn to understand the danger. His head flops forward and sort of sways on his neck, loopy grin the evidence of Billy’s violence. 

“I get it, man, I understand,” Steve offers. His hands twitch below in Billy’s periphery. They rise weak and unsteady, but true, to tangle in the hem of Billy’s t-shirt. Holding on. Tugging Billy closer instead of doing the wise thing and running away. “I… I know what it’s like to be alone.”

All the hot, furious wind in Billy’s sails dies with that one sentence. All he manages is a broken, “What?”

Steve sighs and admits with his voice dragged over coals, “My parents aren’t around a lot. And everybody at school thinks that’s the coolest thing, that I’ve got it made with no parents to tell me what to do. But nobody understands how lonely that is. There’s nobody in my house right now to ask what I’m doing for Halloween tonight, if I’m gonna dress up. Maybe they’ll be around for Christmas, but it’s not a guarantee. They’ve forgotten my birthday a few times. And nobody gets how much that hurts and how much that sucks, to be alone.”

His first two birthdays without Mom, soon to be his second Christmas without her, too. He hadn’t gone out for Halloween last year, won’t again this year, but he thought about her every time the doorbell rang for tricks and treats. It was a long night spent with his earbuds jammed in as far and as loud as they’d go. Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her and how much he wished he was with her. Tonight will be a repeat.

Just as Susan’s fairness had been a square peg in a round hole to Billy, Steve’s kindness makes about as much sense. Billy fights it like he fights everything—teeth gritted and gnashing, glaring through his pain despite wanting nothing more than to break down and cry. When he thinks he has everything cobbled together to tell Steve off again, the other boy just keeps on going. His long fingers are still tangled in the bottom of Billy’s shirt.

“And I’m not looking for a pity party or anything, ‘oh poor Harrington all alone in his big house, boo-hoo cry about it.’” Steve’s voice returns from its mocking pitch, and he rolls his eyes. He meets Billy’s for a split second but just as quickly angles his sorrow back down to Billy’s jaw. “It’s not a competition or anything. I’m willing to bet whatever you went through to end up in this shithole was worse than what I deal with. A lot worse. I’m just…” Steve sighs and shrugs. “I’m just saying you don’t have to be alone.”

Now Billy finds it in himself to separate them. Biting back his shame and hurt, he throws Steve away from him. Steve doesn’t have far to go, just slumps back onto the scrap pile. He doesn’t even look that put-out about it, huffs when he reaches up to rub the back of his hand across his jaw. It probably hurts. The two spots where their skin had collided. Billy regards him a step or two away with his heart still in his throat. It’s not that easy. Being alone is the only thing that stops him from doing bad things. He can’t hurt Steve, can’t beat Steve, can’t rape Steve if Steve isn’t around him. He’ll have to try harder to keep Steve safe.

“I’m fine,” he lies. He steps away with his hands jammed into his pockets, already making for the paths in the woods beyond. Where he’ll go, he isn’t sure. He isn’t ready for the four walls of his room. “I don’t need you or anyone else, so just stay away from me.”

When Steve’s voice tickles his ear, saying his name with such insistence, Billy gives up the ghost and takes off through the woods. If Steve won’t listen to reason, won’t keep away, then Billy will. Running away. Always running.


	8. Chapter 8

Billy is still fifteen, still hellbent on avoiding Steve, when another annoyance burdens him.

Maxine’s girlfriend, El or Jane or whatever, starts popping up in his hiding places, too. It starts in March when the snow melts and the temperatures rise from below freezing. Warm enough for Billy to take back to the woods and abandoned places around Hawkins. She’s more persistent than Steve. And not afraid of him even when he curses and throws rocks at her to scare her. She has the sort of hollowness and intensity in her eyes Billy sees in his when he’s at the end of his rope, and it terrifies him more than Steve wanting to be his friend.

That hasn’t changed, either. Steve sits with him at lunch every day, shows up at his locker to follow him around. Occasionally loitering wherever Billy is around town. When Steve can keep up. Billy is fast and sneaky, used to slipping around his old neighborhood like a roving dog. El is just like him, in that regard. He cannot shake her, and it comes to a head about a week before Steve’s birthday. Billy knows it’s April 13th, knows Steve’s parents are throwing a party. Because Steve invited him and keeps asking if Billy is coming. Because Steve wants him to.

“Why the fuck are you following me?” He snarls, curl of his breath drifting on the frigid air. It’s nice in the sun. In the shade like this? Even with all the trees naked in this stretch of wood? It’s frigid. “You got a problem with me?”

El steps forward, the leaf litter under her barely making a sound. She’s annoying in that way. Billy is almost silent when he passes through woods or a backyard. El would put some deer to shame with her silence.

“I want to talk to you. Alone.”

Billy throws his arms around to the dim wilderness.

“So what’s stopping you? We’re very much alone out here.”

She takes another step, eyes intense on his and paying no mind to her footing. 

“Will you listen? Or will you run away from me like you do with Steve?”

How the hell does she know about that? Billy chalks it up to Steve being friends with Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler, siblings of Maxine’s friends Will and Mike respectively. And El’s friends by extension. It’s not a stretch to think Steve has complained about Billy to them. It’s what friends do, after all. 

“I don’t run away from him! He’s just… annoying. I just want him to stay out of my business.”

“That’s not what my little brother says.”

Head thrown back, exhausted already, Billy groans, “Jesus, I don’t care!”

When he rights his head, El is only a few paces away from him. He hadn’t heard her move.

“Shit!”

He stumbles back to create that precious distance between them, but El talks right over his scrambling, “Jonathan says you hurt Steve on purpose so he'll stop trying to be your friend.”

Billy grits his teeth through a snarl. Why can’t people just keep their fucking mouths shut?

“So what if I am? What’s it to you?”

El is impossible to read, a sheet of black glass. Billy only seems himself reflected back at him. Billy hates it, how his devil eyes have no impact on her. He’s yet to meet someone he could not cow with his intense stare. The longer they stand in the woods shivering, the more Billy suspects he won’t be able to outrun her, too. So he’s stuck. No choice.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Talk away.”

“Not here,” and then she takes off in a different direction from where they’ve come from and where Billy had been going.

The paths Billy knows so well begin to fall away. In his mental map, he traces their path farther and farther away from town. Not outside Hawkins. Not past the abandoned Department of Energy building deep in the woods, but damn near close. He knows Maxine and her group, El included, used to stomp around there when they were still in high school. The allure of reclaiming the abandoned and making it your own. That’s over now, though. With the exception of El, they’re graduated. Maxine is chomping at the bit to pack up her room and go off to college after taking a gap year. Waiting for El, the only one of the Party in a grade lower than the rest of them. Billy grits his teeth over a growl, annoyed with himself that he knows so much about his cousin and her friends. What does he care? It’s not like any of them are nice to him except El and Will. And that’s probably out of pity, so. It doesn’t count. 

When they finally stop well past Billy’s mental map of Hawkins, Billy finds them standing in front of an old cabin. Locked up tight with the windows covered, it looks like no one lives here. Maybe another hang out spot for teenagers? The adventurous ones who don’t mind a deep trek into the boonies, that is. Even recalling their winding path here? Billy would not seek out this place. It’s almost dark when El slips her house keys out of her pocket and unlocks the cabin’s front door. Not what Billy had been expecting, so he stands in leaf litter and crunchy snow as El steps inside. Orange light flickers to life and glows out the open door and down the two steps of the porch. El pokes her head back out.

“Coming?”

It has to be warmer in there than out here. Besides, her dad is the damn chief of police. It’s not like she’s going to do anything to him. Although now thinking about that, wouldn’t it be easier for her to hide a dead body because her dad is the chief of police? Billy edges a step back, into the darkness, but El is still in the open door.

“You said we could talk,” she reminds him. She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Or are you going to run away from me, too?”

Fucking bitch. He keeps it to himself, but his snarl speaks for him. She knows she has him, drops her arms with a nod and then disappears back into the cabin. Expecting him to follow her inside. When he does, her voice drifts to him from a bedroom beyond, telling him to close and lock the door. Not asking. From anyone else, they’d get a spicy curse and a middle finger from him. El is just that way, so he just grumbles under his breath and does as he’s told. That done, fists deep in his pockets to channel his frustration, Billy scopes the rest of the cabin out.

Maybe someone had lived here at some point. There is a space for a fridge and stove to his right, but they are long gone. Pipes from the rusty propane tank outside, like a tipped cow, are capped off where the appliances had one been. Even now, the source of light that had welcomed Billy inside is only from a wood-burning stove. If this place has electricity, it’s turned off.

“What kind of murder cabin is this?” He murmurs mostly to himself.

“It belongs to my dad.”

Billy startles on his feet with floor boards protesting under him when El materializes out of the dark.

“Jesus,” he swears. “Make a noise when you walk or something… So this cabin belongs to the Chief?”

El steps into the light and stares at him with harsh shadows cutting her face.

“He lived here before he married Joyce. Now we use it as a place to hang out. The Party.” She steps closer, one of her arms curled around a shoebox. “I have something to show you.”

The inky blackness of a bedroom lurks behind her. But that is not for them. She takes him by a wrist and leads him to the sunken couch near the fire. It’s a worn couch, same as the one in his room Mr Mayfield forgot to move when Billy first arrived. He uses it from time to time when his bed just doesn’t feel right under him. Sometimes he just needs something at his back when he sleeps. It’s something he can’t explain, but he doesn’t think about that when El places the shoebox between them.

Taking her hands away and sitting with a leg drawn up in front of her, El nods to the box and says, “Open it.”

“… Okay…”

Inside are single-subject notebooks, pages sort of ratty from age and repeated flipping through the. Mixed in are also loose-leaf papers. The loose-leaf pages are mostly drawings in crayon and colored pencil. Billy shies away from those immediately when he picks out the word ‘Papa’ written in crude handwriting above the stick figure of a man. With a smaller stick figure beside it, ‘me’ written above that one. He turns his attention to the notebooks, thinking them a safer avenue. As he grabs the first one with its yellow cover half torn off, El speaks softly to him.

“I didn’t live in Hawkins until I was twelve. My mom Joyce and my dad Jim couldn’t adopt me until I was thirteen. Before that, I lived with my Papa.”

Billy tries not to read the scribbled words on the pages in his lap. Angry and lonely, so lost as the handwriting becomes illegible in places, pages torn and then taped back together sometimes. The handwriting gets better towards the end of the notebook. The second one Billy picks up makes him want to be sick. This handwriting is worse. The quiet desperation is worse. 

“Papa didn’t let me go outside or play with others. We lived just outside Indianapolis, but no one knew about me. I could look out the little window in the basement where my room was and see other kids play and go to school. Papa always had an answer for me when I asked why I couldn’t go to school or go outside. I believed him.”

Despite the heat of the fire aimed directly at them, Billy could not be colder. Chilled down to his bones until he shivers in his jacket. The passages under his eyes are childish retellings of abuse so twisted and cruel. He sees them play like an old movie, the frames stuttering and jumping before the reel spins at its correct speed. It’s how he remembers Neil and everything they did together. Every moment on the couch. Ever night climbing into bed naked with him. Every prick of Neil’s moustache when they would kiss. All of that and more, so much worse, repeats for him in a child’s handwriting in the notebooks. He doesn’t need to ask El who’d written the horrific passages. He looks up at her, torn open and eyes stinging, and knows she wrote them.

El’s eyes are wet too when she adds, “One day, a loud noise upstairs went off. The basement door was unlocked. It was never unlocked. When I walked upstairs to look around, I found Papa on the kitchen floor holding pictures someone took of me in the backyard. It was the first time he let me outside that I could remember. Someone knew I existed. So Papa killed himself instead of admitting what he did to me.”

Billy flicks a hand up to his eyes lightning quick to not let tears bead down his cheeks. He rubs the back of his hand hard across his eyes until colors bloom in the darkness. El goes on.

“I would not find out until much later that someone hired a private detective to find me. His name was…” El frowns and blinks down at her lap, paying no mind to Billy rubbing at his eyes with both hands, now. “Murphy? Murray? I think… But he knew I was alive and that Papa kept me in a secret room in the basement. He waited years to prove I existed and took pictures of me in the backyard that time Papa let me out. He sent them to the police and Papa, hoping maybe Papa would run and the police could capture him or us. The house had traps everywhere, and only Papa knew how to stop them. That’s what he told me, but none of it was true. Nothing he ever said was true.”

She regards him again and stares hard at him as her words linger. El does not ridicule him for his tears or how he can’t meet her eyes for long. Although he stares down at the pages, they are illegible through blurry, irritated eyes. A blessing. Steve had once said to him it’s not a competition. Billy’s suffering compared to anyone else’s. Despite that, he’s almost ashamed for how much he struggles with Neil and what happened compared to what El lived through.

“How?” Billy croaks, finally lifting his head. “How do you deal with it? Aren’t you scared you’ll hurt people? Like he hurt you?”

El gives a tiny shrug and watches him fall apart in that quiet way of hers.

“I used to think about it all the time. But Papa was a bad person. A bad papa. I don’t have to be bad, I choose what I am. And I don’t want to hurt people.”

“It’s not that easy!” He shrieks. “You-you say it like it’s that easy! It’s not that easy!” Grabbing at his hair, Billy pushes the wild curls on top of his head down before pulling on them. “I think about it all the time,” he moans. “I don’t wanna hurt Steve, but I know I will, I’ll fuck him up, but I don’t want to, I don’t…”

He folds over his lap and the notebook splayed open with its grotesque history. Curling up as tightly as he can, he bites back sobs and screams like he always does when he reaches a breaking point. He flinches when the box at his thigh goes spilling off the couch. El shoves it away to close the space between them. He struggles, smacking his hands to her shoulders and trying to leap out of her arms. She’s stronger than she looks and wrestles him back to her. He’ll hurt her, too, if she gives him the chance. He’s already done something twisted and disgusting to her—right when he’d first arrived, peeking on her and Maxine. His fantasies concern mostly Steve nowadays. But at the start? He got off to the images of them more times than he can count. Disgusting and twisted, just like Neil.

“No, no don’t,” he begs, still trying to wiggle out of her arms. His own are trapped to his sides, and the longer she holds him like this, the harder it is to breathe. “Let me go!”

Her voice is soft in his ear when she says, “I know what it’s like to be alone. To be afraid.”

He stops struggling with his chin hooked over her shoulder. He stares into the fire, watching flames lick at pale wood just behind the grate. Steve had said the same to him. Steve couldn’t possibly know what happened before Billy arrived here. El may not know the full story, either. But she knows enough to understand him. Maybe that’s why she intervened on his behalf when Maxine was ready to expose him for the pervert he is. If El’s father did terrible things to her, too, then she would understand. The thoughts and memories in his head, the forbidden knowledge that burdens him.

El squeezes him tighter, coaxing a hiccup out of him.

“I was very angry when Joyce first adopted me. I tore up her house, broke my brothers’ toys. Just to make them cry. I talked back to Jim all the time, because he’s not as calm as Joyce. I wanted him to hit me like Papa did, because I didn’t understand that Papa was bad, that what he did to me was wrong. I thought because no one was treating me like Papa did that I was doing something wrong. It look a long time before I realized my new life was normal, that Papa was never coming back and would never hurt me again.”

Shuddering, Billy asks, so small, “Is that why you stuck your neck out for me? When you saw me watching you and Maxine?”

He doesn’t need to ask. He already knows the answer. El nodding pops some sort of stopper in him and makes him sag against her body. She takes his weight like it’s nothing and goes right on holding him.

“Max overheard her parents talking about you. About what someone told them happened to you. She told me before you even arrived, and I warned her you might do the same things I did when she first met me. Max was the one who told me I shouldn’t do those things, like try to look at our friends that way and try to kiss them, like I was used to doing with Papa. It was all because of her that I realized I was doing bad things, so I stopped.” El’s shoulders shake for a second. Not tears but… laughter? “I hated her when we first met, because my brother Will and his friends, our friends, all thought she was the coolest. I wanted to hurt her like you with Steve.”

He clings to the back of her jacket and pleads, “How did you do it? How did you stop?”

She tips her head back, her hair almost touching Billy’s. He glances up to look at her. Those impossibly dark eyes of hers are closed as she breathes and gathers herself. Billy hangs on her every word, is desperate to know the secret of her normality. 

“Whenever I would think about hurting Max or anyone else, I would imagine Papa saying the words. Not me. Because…” She opens her eyes and sighs. “Because I was carrying Papa around with me like a wound. And if I let him stay, it would fester and get worse and turn me into a monster just like him. So when I would hear him say the bad thoughts in my head, I would fight them and tell myself  **I** didn’t want those things. They weren’t real. They were Papa’s words.”

It’s worth a fucking shot, because wandering Hawkins like a wounded, wild animal isn’t working. Hasn’t been working, only Billy’s pride didn’t allow him to admit it. And… he doesn’t want to be alone. He’s used to it, he knows that. But he doesn’t want to be alone anymore. It’s just too scary to let anyone get close. Like Steve, even though Steve could not be more earnest in his desire for friendship, to bury the hatchet between them. Billy finds now that when lunch is over and they have to go back to their separate classes or when gym is over and they have to move on that… he doesn’t want Steve to go. It’s not enough, the stolen pockets of time Billy allows himself with Steve. At this point, Steve following him around the woods like a puppy brings him joy more than it annoys him. It’s the closest he’s gotten to being someone’s friend in a long time. He’s just scared to let it be real.

El lets him go nice and slow. She leaves him the option to remove himself entirely from her arms or to let her linger. No one has ever given him the choice before. She understands. Finally someone understands.

With eyes that are painfully dried out now, Billy glances down to El’s notebook in his lap. He’s never thought to write anything down. Anything that happened to him. It’s too shameful to put on paper. Someone might see it. Who knows if El had any close calls if the Party claimed this place as a sort of clubhouse. Sniffling a few times, Billy flips the notebook closed and lays his hands flat on top of it. No, this part won’t work for him. He already sees himself growing frustrated sitting on the brown couch in his room, knowing exactly what to write but being unable to find the words. He’s smart, but writing is a pain in the ass. 

“I wish I could do this,” Billy laments, flicking the notebook in his lap. “I think my social worker said something about keeping a journal, that it would help. But I know I’d see it as a chore more than anything.”

“You could talk about it instead.”

Billy glances up at her.

“You mean to my social worker? Or…?”

She shrugs.

“You can talk to me if you want. I’ve never met someone else with a bad papa like ours. Jonathan and Will’s papa is… He is not bad like ours, but he is not good, either.”

‘He’s not a good daddy, Billy Goat,’ Mom had once warned him. She tried so hard to protect him.

It’s starting to creep up on him again. His sadness and frustration with keeping it all in. Maybe El senses it, because she slips the notebook from Billy’s lap, picks the box up, and returns it to the dark bedroom. When El reappears, she kneels in front of the stove to douse the fire. With the flames hissing their final breaths, she plunges them into darkness. Billy isn’t afraid of the dark. It’s familiar to him after roaming Hawkins so much. He and El move through it together, aware of each other but not touching. It’s only when they step into the frigid night, their breaths fogging up like clouds, that he speaks.

“I… I think Steve would understand. Or at least he would listen, but…” Billy bites himself under the cover of darkness. It’s safe to be uncertain when El cannot see him be uncertain. “But I’ve never told anyone what happened. None of it. I don’t know if I can do it.”

El takes the lead, steps off the porch and into the moonlight cutting through the trees. They’ll be barren for at least another month. Winter’s grip here lingers. Billy has never known such persistent cold. He’s maybe never known such warmth except from Mom when El stretches out her hand and makes a grabbing motion for him.

“Then talk while we walk back to Max’s house and pretend like you’re alone. I won’t say anything.”

She isn’t going to repeat anything he says. He knows that somehow. Just like El knows he’ll never tell anyone about her. Not that the Party isn’t fully aware. Billy would bet the money stuffed under the couch in his room from mowing lawns that at least Maxine knows the full story. Knows about the notebooks and about El’s struggles with her thoughts. Billy hopes to try her technique next time he thinks about hurting Steve. He wants it to work so badly, wants all of this to amount to something, that he swallows his pride and takes El’s hand. They walk side-by-side down the same footpath that had brought them to the cabin.

“I… I didn’t know who my dad was until I was five. My mom took us away from him, because she said he was bad. I didn’t understand when she told me that, but I guess I do now… But he found us somehow when I was seven and…”

He glosses over some things. Doesn’t spell out the details of every moment in Neil’s apartment, where nearly everything occurred except the event that’d led to their discovery. They’re just outside the enclosed porch of the Mayfield house when he gets to that part. But maybe El already knows?

“When Maxine overheard her parents talking about me, were they talking about my mom finding me with my dad? In a motel room?”

A frown drifts over El’s face and the silence drags. He needs to go inside soon. Susan and Mr Mayfield don’t always understand his need for space and to roam on the longest leash they’ll afford him. But they respect it. It keeps him out of trouble, keeps his grades up. Behaving at school takes their focus off him. It twists him up inside that it’s the same technique he’d used to assuage Neil. Anything to appease the adults in his life so they don’t discipline him. His life of avoidance. He’s done a good job tonight of not avoiding things with El. The floodgates are open for her. He talked the whole walk back with only her hand wrapped around his to guide him through the dark. Finding his way back to the Mayfield house in the dark is nothing. He didn’t need to watch his steps with her, could just unload while she kept him safe. It was… nice.

El’s frown persists as she shakes her head.

“No, Max just told me that you were taken away from your parents because someone found out you were… That someone was doing bad things to you.”

“Molesting me,” Billy says point blank. He cannot abide by her vagueness. “That’s what happened to us, El. Our fathers molested us.”

Her mouth squirms in distaste, but she nods all the same. She has different words for it. But that’s the black and white of it. Billy would rather not sugarcoat it. Because the sugarcoating isn’t for his sake, and if he’s going to be honest about what happened, then he wants the word to make people uncomfortable. So they can’t try and minimize what he went through. He’s tired of pretending like he’s okay, like Mom didn’t beat Neil to death with a baseball bat. All this time, he denied it and pretended like Mom just ‘hurt’ Neil. She killed Neil for what he did to Billy. She may spend the rest of her life in prison for it. Billy isn’t sure yet. The trial isn’t scheduled until the summer. He’s already heard Susan and Mr Mayfield discuss with Miss Rennard over the phone when he’ll be flying back to California. To testify.

Sighing, Billy explains without inflection, “My dad was always alluding to finally having sex with me, like going all the way. So he lied to me and said we were going to a carnival to celebrate my straight A’s. We stopped at a diner first. He drugged the milkshake he ordered for me, took me to a motel, and raped me. The lady at the front desk who rented him the room recognized me and called my mom. She found us and… beat him to death with my baseball bat.”

Saying it out loud makes it real. The last part is the hardest to make real. Because much like El’s Papa, Neil is never coming back. Neil will never be lurking around a corner in a store to take him away or hurt him again. Mom had made the ultimate sacrifice for him, took control of Billy’s wildly out of control life and protected him when he needed her most. Shivering in the dark night, Billy thinks that… Neil wouldn’t have stopped after that one time. It was wishful thinking on Billy’s part. Finally getting what he always wanted would not have stopped Neil from doing it again. More. Worse. 

“Billy.”

He blinks and shakes himself a little, blue eyes flicking up to meet El’s.

El rolls her lips into a thin line as she considers her words carefully. They’ve long since dropped their hands while walking up on the house. In case someone would see and get the wrong idea. Or at least that’s why Billy took his hand away first. This day has been cathartic. He would rather not get into it with Maxine if she were to see them holding hands. It would turn into a thing. All he wants to do is lie down in bed, turn his Walkman on, and fall asleep. El’s expression softens, he thinks maybe that will be an achievable goal tonight. A weight has lightened on his shoulders. Not lifted, but lightened. 

“Your mom… she loves you a lot. I hope you get to see her soon.”

Billy doesn’t argue with that leap of logic. El can’t possibly know that. But Billy wants that, too, for Mom to still love him. So he believes her.

“Me, too.”

The next day, Billy takes what he’d learned the night before—hurting Steve is something Neil would think, it’s not him, Billy doesn’t want that—and uses it when Steve lingers in the locker room as they dress down. Having gym first thing in the morning is a blessing and a curse. They’ll beat the heat as it ramps up in May, but for now it’s chilly as they run a mile to ‘warm up.’ Mr Fink laughs at his own joke every frigid morning to the collective groans of his students. Before that, though, there’s a matter of a certain someone’s birthday party to discuss. And whether or not Billy is still invited. He doesn’t assume in case the answer is no. That way, his feelings won’t be hurt.

“Hey Steve?”

It’s the first time he’s called Steve something other than ‘Harrington’ or worse. So Billy isn’t at all surprised when Steve slaps his locker closed and takes a step before jolting back to Billy.

“Uh, yea? What’s up?”

Nervous immediately, Billy bites back the way he wants to squirm out of this and just tell Steve to forget about it. He can’t with those big eyes trained on him. So hopeful, always ready to accept any sort of attention Billy will give him. Steve is still hellbent on them being friends. It would be obvious if he’d given up by now. Steve has no reason to share a table with Billy at lunch, has no reason to find Billy at his locker, especially no reason to seek Billy out all over Hawkins to just… talk at him. Not in the rude way adults do, Billy just doesn’t say anything back. Too afraid until now he would say something with Neil’s words coming out of his mouth. No more of that.

“Your parents still throwing you a lame birthday party?”

Steve immediately perks up.

“Yea, do you, I mean you’re invited, do you wanna come? You said no last time, but like of course you’re—”

“When is it?”

“April 13th.”

Steve’s birthday is on a Wednesday this year. His party isn’t going to be in the middle of the week.

Sighing, Billy tries again, “When is the party, Steve.”

Steve has the decency to blush and grin so sheepishly at him.

“Oh duh, it’s the weekend after. My mom had these dumb invitations made, they’re really lame, I didn’t hand them out to anybody.”

“Do you have them handy? Like in your locker?”

Amber eyes blink at him and then boyish lips frown at him.

“Yea, they’re in my locker. Why, you want one?”

Billy shrugs, slaps his own locker shut, and then makes for the swinging door that leads back to the gym.

“May as well so I know where to go, what time it is, all that shit. You know. The purpose of a physical invitation.”

He wants to be friends with Steve. He can admit that, now. But he’s not going to turn over a new leaf and just be nice all of a sudden. If Steve doesn’t like Billy’s abrasive personality right now, they can kiss this friendship thing goodbye. Billy hadn’t changed for the Mayfields, he’s not going to change for some dumb, ridiculous, annoyingly cute boy. 

Billy stops right in his tracks with his foot lifted for the next stride. It’s only by Steve’s mercurial grace that he doesn’t run straight into Billy’s back.

“Woah man, why’d you stop? You probably woulda decked me if I ran into you just now.”

Steve says it with a laugh—funny haha—but Billy doubts he would have punched Steve out of nowhere like that. He’s too hung up on the idea that Steve is cute. Steve is very cute. Pretty. It’s one of the first things Billy had ever said to Steve. That Steve has a pretty face. Sure, a threat to beat that face in accompanied the compliment. But Billy meant it then, and he means it now. Steve is very pretty.

The thought is almost too scary to touch. Other thoughts creep in with their slimy fingers, and Billy slams his eyes shut. The locker room falls away, Steve falls away. Briefly alone in darkness, Billy screams over the echoes of his father’s voice. Promising all sorts of terrible things if Steve gets any closer. Let him have this! Let him have one fucking nice thing! Neil took everything from him. Billy deserves one nice thing.

“Billy? You okay man?”

For someone worried about being punched for touching Billy with no warning, Steve sure is chummy with his hand on Billy’s shoulder. Billy looks down at it, and Steve joins him. Steve realizes it a second later and carefully lifts his hand away with yet another sheepish grin.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to hang all over you like that.” He didn’t, Billy doesn’t mind, but he says nothing. “But, uh, are you okay? You stopped all of a sudden and got really quiet.”

“Just…” Lie. It doesn’t matter what the lie is, just lie. Steve won’t be able to tell. “Just thinking what to get for a rich boy like you who has everything.”

“You don’t have to get me anything.”

It’s not the response Billy expects. He pauses with his hand pushing the floppy door to the locker room, glances over his shoulder at Steve’s little pout. 

“What?”

Steve shrugs and looks away.

“You don’t have to get me anything. I don’t want anything.”

The temptation exists to poke more fun at Steve’s privilege. This isn't the time, though. Steve is sincere and almost sad in his statement. Sensitive about it. 

“You sure?”

One corner of Steve’s mouth twitches into a smile. It almost has staying power.

“Yea man, I’m sure. Just bring yourself, that’s enough.”

Refusing to read into that lest his face turn pink and Steve sees it, Billy coughs, “Sounds great,” and then walks through the door. If he’s lighter than air all through the day and practically floats into his room after school, he doesn’t read into that either. It hadn’t meant anything. Steve is just nice.

The weekend cannot come fast enough. 


	9. Chapter 9

Billy is fifteen during the summer between freshman and sophomore year of high school. It’s the first time in forever that his body bobs in water he can actually submerge in. Steve has a pool. Once it opened in May, Billy has practically lived here. Missing the ocean. The pool is a poor substitute. Chlorine is less than desirable. Billy will not bite the hand that feeds. Steve doesn’t complain either. Tommy and Carol do, not exactly thrilled with sharing Steve. Jonathan Byers would rather hang out with his brother—plus Billy knows Jonathan is uncomfortable around him—and so drops out even sooner. Fewer and fewer friends show up as the days grow longer until it’s just the two of them. It’s how Billy has wanted it since day one. It’s rare that he gets what he wants.

Floating side-by-side with Steve as the sun sets on another June day, Billy recalls the conversation Susan and Mr Mayfield had sat down with him to have. About Mom's trial. About Billy flying back to California to testify. The conversation also consisted of a phone call to Miss Rennard. That was the least pleasant part. She reiterated that she cannot tell him what to say. That he needs to tell the truth and nothing else. To not volunteer information. Only answer the questions asked him. She’ll be testifying too, for some reason. He fears it’s because people won’t believe what happened. That the trial will go pear-shaped and somehow Mom will take the blame for what she did. That people won’t believe she did it to protect him. He worries about it constantly, thinks about it more than Neil. It’s almost freeing, to not think about Neil. 

“Hey uh… I won’t be here for a little while after the Fourth.”

There’s no startle or splash. Just Steve’s arm brushing his as he floats and nudges himself around to stay close. To not float away from Billy.

“Oh yea? How come?”

He’s never told Steve the circumstances that had brought him to Hawkins. Steve just knows something bad happened to Billy and then he moved here. They’ve been friends since Steve’s birthday. It seems like a lifetime ago—Billy avoiding Steve at all costs to keep him safe. Now? No one could hope to keep them apart. Billy knows it’s annoying for Steve’s other friends. He doesn’t care. They’ve had their whole lives to be friends with Steve and laugh with him and experience him. He’s wasted on them. Tiny movements in the pool bump them together again, only this time their hands brush. Billy makes no move to separate them. He’s doing that more and more recently. Letting Steve touch him, throw an arm around him, stand close enough to smell him. It’s dangerous to think what Billy could get away with. What Steve would allow. More.

Drawing in a deep breath and disturbing the puddles of pool water on him, Billy admits, “It’s about the shit that happened to me before I moved here. Like why I was forced to move here to live with my aunt and uncle.”

Softly, “Yea? Do you wanna like… talk about it? You don’t have to, I’m not trying to be nosy, I just—”

“Cool your jets, Steve, it’s fine.”

And for once, he’s not lying when he says that. Talking to El that night back in April had been freeing. It’s not a secret anymore. What happened to him. After that, he spoke briefly to El again when neither of them could sleep. She slipped out of Maxine’s room, no shame in wearing one of Maxine’s Atari t-shirts and just underwear, and sat on the couch while Billy stayed in his bed. He asked her if she ever felt guilty about any of it. If she ever missed her father and then felt disgusted with herself before of it. She confessed that yes, in the beginning, she missed him terribly. Because for the first time in her life, she was alone. She was in a foster family, not much better than Billy at the center in San Diego, and she hated every second of it. Escaped a few times before Joyce took her in, adopted her once Joyce and Jim got married.

After that? She had said that it slowly all went away. She doesn’t even think about it anymore. It’s still there, it never goes away. But it doesn’t make her angry or sad to think about. It’s just something that happened to her. Billy longs for the days where he doesn’t think about it anymore. He’s getting there, he thinks. He thinks about Steve more than anything else now. Steve like the Alvarez boys back home, so impressive. Like Gene, his little boy crush before everything went so wrong. It’s easy to like Steve and think about him. The bad thoughts are still there. They’re here right now, because it would be easy to hold Steve under the water until his struggling stopped. Or force Steve to let Billy touch him while threatening to drown him. It would be easy. For Neil. For Billy, it is impossible. So he doesn’t let the thoughts linger.

Sighing, Billy rights himself in the water. He’d meant what he said to El that night. That Steve would understand. Steve won’t hate him or think any of this is Billy’s fault. El assured him during that last midnight talk that none of what happened was Billy’s fault. Neil was in control, controlled him every second he could. Distantly? Billy always knew that. He never has a choice in anything. Well, he does now. He chose to follow El to the cabin that night, chose to tell her his story, chose to befriend Steve. He can have this, too. Truth laid bare between them. No secrets. If Steve doesn’t want him anymore after that? Then it wasn’t meant to be. At least Billy will have made the choice for himself.

Arms hooked over the lip of the pool, the space to Billy’s right isn’t empty for long. Steve barely makes a splash when he kicks himself over and copies Billy. The sun is behind the huge pines just beyond Steve’s backyard. They no longer bake under its rays, but the humidity persists. Swimming in the heat of the day is a bit like swimming in soup. No one could hope to get Billy out of this pool, though. Not for anything less than food or a piss, anyway. Or if Steve climbs out. Because now the game of cat and mouse between them has flipped. When they’re alone together? Wherever Steve goes, Billy follows. Billy hooks his chin over one of his arms and sort of smiles at nothing. The irony.

Softly at his side, always gentle, “Billy?”

A sigh.

“If I tell you what happened to me, you can’t tell anyone else.”

“Duh,” Steve scoffs. He bobs next to Billy and nudges the ball of his shoulder. Billy is fully golden again. Steve only burns, never tans. “That’d be a messed up thing to do, spreading your business around. Plus you’d probably strangle me in my sleep.”

“Nah, I wouldn't kill you.” Billy nudges him right back. “I’d just stop talking to you and give you the coldest shoulder you’ve ever seen. It would drive you bonkers.”

“Don’t be mean to me.”

Billy turns his head just enough to meet Steve’s big eyes and the pout he probably doesn’t know is on his pretty lips.

“But you make it so much fun, how can I not be mean to you?”

They share a smile instead of bickering further, though. It’s all a game between them. Boys and their games. Billy leaves his head turned towards Steve, his cheek a little fat against his arm, and just watches Steve for a spell. This is it. He’s about to change the whole vibe between them. Steve won’t be mad or think Billy is disgusting. Billy knows that much. He won’t be able to take Steve pitying him, though. That probably won’t happen. Steve hates it when people pity him for being lonely. It’s why Steve had said anything about his absent parents in the first place. Because he knew Billy was alone. Lonely people understand each other. Billy isn’t lonely anymore. He never wants to be lonely ever again, hopes Steve understands that.

Taking a deep breath until his stomach touches the pool wall, Billy sighs, “Okay, here it goes.”

But then Billy says nothing more. He hugs the side of the pool and just stares somewhere near Steve’s jaw, the beauty marks on his cheek. Steve has turned his head to face Billy, still mirroring him. A gust pets over their backs above the waterline, drying them. Their hair will be stiff and crunchy from the chlorine. 

“Billy, you don’t… you don’t gotta tell me if you don’t want,” Steve’s insistent drifts through the small space between them, coaxing Billy’s eyes up. “It’s-it’s none of my business. Seriously, you don’t gotta tell me.”

“I want to.”

Lips parting and eyebrows high, Steve blinks at him. When he says nothing, hanging on Billy’s words, Billy sighs again. It’s best to rip off the bandaid in one go instead of peeling it off.

“From when I was seven until I was thirteen, my dad molested me. Regularly. It didn’t stop until my mom walked in on us. She beat my dad to death with a baseball bat, and that’s why I have to go back to California in July, to testify in her trial.”

Steve sits up like someone has stuck his finger in an outlet. His mouth opens and closes a few times as his face flinches through emotions. Horror, anger, deep sadness. They all make for a stupefied Steve until something finally wriggles past the jumble of emotions.

“Are-are you serious?”

“You know I am.”

Steve just crumbles further, fighting with anger and terrible sadness. Anger at what? Neil? Billy has been there time and time again. Angry at Neil for doing this to him, angry at adults in his life for not seeing it happening under their noses. Angry at himself for letting it happen. He knows better, now. El made that clear for him. Neil was never going to let someone find out. He kept it carefully hidden. It’s so obvious in hindsight, of course. How they would kiss goodbye at Neil’s apartment. How they stayed home most of the time, so Neil could have access to him. Building Billy into the obedient plaything Neil wanted him to be. El’s Papa did the same to her, only so much worse. Locking her in the basement so early on that she never went to school, didn’t have a birth certificate. Closing his eyes with a shiver, Billy wonders if maybe Neil wanted the same. Maybe that’s why Mom took them away from him. It’s plausible. Maybe he’ll never know.

Somehow, Billy does not flinch under Steve’s hand that rests on his upper arm. Steve is so tactile, so touchy. Billy remembers being that way, always wanting Mom to carry him or hold him. Always wanting to play too rough with the Alvarez boys next door. Steve’s touch is different. Steve touches him so casually, but always with purpose. Always with a glance like, ‘Is this okay?’ Steve gives him a choice to allow it, to entertain Steve sometimes hanging all over him. When they wrestle in the pool, that’s when it’s best. When they’re just two boys laughing and tugging on each other. No one has ever given Billy that before. So he doesn’t flinch under Steve’s hand, how Steve’s fingers dent his skin a little and his thumb strokes over Billy’s tan. 

“Billy, I… I don’t know what to say, I…”

Billy doesn’t shrug like he wants to. In case Steve mistakes the motion for dismissal. He doesn’t want Steve to pull away.

“There’s really nothing to say. It happened, it’s over, and now I’m sort of dealing with the consequences.”

“Consequences?”

Billy cracks open an eye.

“You don’t exactly fuck your dad for six years and come out okay, Steve. Ignoring the whole thing with my mom and the murder trial, like I’ve got shit I have to deal with, too. It doesn’t go away just because he’s dead.”

“N-no, man, I get that, I guess…”

“You really don’t.” Now Billy sits back up, Steve’s hand sliding back into the water. Billy bobs as he turns to face Steve. This part of the pool is shallow enough to bounce on his toes instead of having to tread water. “I wouldn’t let us be friends until recently, because I was scared I’d hurt you, and I didn’t wanna hurt anybody.”

Steve flinches and then asks, “Hurt me how?”

Billy wonders briefly if when Steve looks at him if Steve sees the hollowness Billy sees in El. They’re the same, him and her. Or at least more similar than he is to Steve. He thinks Steve sees straight into that hollowness, but it doesn’t scare him like it does most people. Steve doesn’t swim away, doesn’t start running his mouth. He finds one of Billy’s hands in the water and takes it without hesitating. Without shame.

“Bad,” Billy says barely above a breath. Saying it makes it real. “Really bad.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says gently, trying for a smile. “I know you wouldn’t do anything to me. Like yea, you beat up some kids when we were in middle school, and you punched Tommy that one time, but like who wouldn’t? Kids are fucking jerks. We were jerks to you, it was two against one.”

“It’s more than that, Steve.”

Steve jolts in the water, but does not remove his hand. His fingers don’t even twitch.

“What do you mean ‘more?’”

Rip the bandaid off.

“When I first got here? I snooped on Maxine and El having sex. I knew what they were doing, I knew about sex since I was a kid cuz, you know, and I wanted to watch them. I was used to it. I did it without thinking about it, and Maxine caught me spying. She didn’t rat me out to her parents because El asked her not to. She’s probably the only reason the Mayfields didn’t ship me right back to California.”

Steve’s shapely eyebrows wrinkle in the middle.

“So what, you wanna watch me get off or something?” He blushes, so unlike himself. Steve isn’t a prude, murmurs suggestions about girls in Billy’s ear all the time. Steve is not a prude. “I um… Do you still want that?”

How like Steve to completely miss the point of all this. And Billy ignores the uptick in his heart, how he wouldn’t say no to anything Steve would allow. Steve isn’t gay, though. Billy actually can’t believe Steve’s straightness hasn’t reared its head to defend his manliness. Anyone else would have by now.

“That’s not the point, Steve,” Billy says while trying to keep his voice even. Trying to keep the frustration out. “It doesn’t matter what I want to see or do to you. The point is that I thought about it all the time. Whenever you were near me, I just had all these thoughts in my head from my dad. About beating you up just because I could. About touching you whether you wanted it or not, because I could. Because you couldn’t stop me.”

They are terrifying thoughts to fight to this day. El’s technique is still working out for him. He lives in fear of the day it doesn’t. He hasn’t acted on those thoughts yet, never wants to. He doesn’t want to lose Steve. So desperate is he that he closes his hand around Steve’s. They’re still holding hands under the water. Steve is safe with him, now. If Steve wants to pull away, wants to send him away, Billy will go. He’ll leave broken pieces of his heart in his wake, but he’ll go. Billy closes his eyes to resign himself to it. He doesn’t want to be alone. Again.

Steve’s hand tightens around his in kind. Holding him back.

“You wouldn’t do that,” comes gently in his ear. Water sloshes between them, the ripple of it brushing higher up Billy’s chest. “I know you wouldn’t like… bad touch me or whatever. I trust you.”

Billy opens his eyes fast enough to make himself dizzy. The water keeps him upright. Steve’s hand is tight around his, not letting go. Steve himself is entirely bashful, now, and turns his head away to sort of smile and glance so shyly at him. His other hand lifts from the water rather pruny and plays with his hair. It’s as stiff with chlorine as Billy knew it would be. But nervous habits die hard.

“Do you, uh, do you still think about that? Cuz it seemed like something changed and you were cool with me after my birthday. We’re friends now, so.”

Steve squeezes his hand for emphasis.

“El was the one to talk to me and help me figure everything out. She was upset that I was avoiding you and hurting your feelings on purpose to keep you away.”

“Cuz you were scared about hurting me?”

Billy nods.

Steve is still bashful when he smiles and says, “Why is that strangely sweet? Coming from you?”

“I-Your guess is as good as mine,” Billy throws out with a twitch of a smile. It has no staying power. “I just… wanted you to know all this. If you don’t wanna be friends anymore, I—”

“Gonna stop you right there. Nobody said anything about us not being friends cuz of what happened to you. Frankly? I’m almost insulted you’d think I’d kick you to the curb. Come on, Billy, it’s me!” Steve grins big and wide at him. “I was the one who followed you around for months and said I knew what it was like to be alone. I have no idea what it was like for you to go through that, but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand where you’re coming from. So shut up about us not being friends or whatever. You’re stuck with me.”

They’re entirely too close, now. The nature of the water and them just breathing and bobbing to maintain their closeness eats up the space between them. Who notices it first, Billy isn’t sure. He can see himself in Steve’s eyes.

“I guess I am,” Billy mumbles with wonder. It’s too new a thought: someone sticking by him in spite of everything. “So you’re really okay with this?”

Another smile tugs on Steve’s pretty face, still a little pink in his cheeks, when he says, “Yea, man, don’t sweat it. Do you mind if I ask if you, like, still think about me?” Steve’s shoulders rise up, and he sort of curls in on himself. Too curious to be silent. “Like in a sexual way?”

Here it comes. Steve brushing it aside with the ‘I’m not gay’ conversation. Well, at least they’re still friends. Billy has never bet any chips on Steve looking at him the way he looks at Steve. A pipe dream is all that is.

“Sometimes,” Billy admits lowly. “I’ll stop.”

Steve bites at his bottom lip and can’t meet Billy’s eyes again when he says, “You don’t have to stop, it’s okay. If we’re confessing stuff, can I tell you something, too?” Amber eyes flash to his, but only for a blink. “So long as you don’t tell anyone, too.”

Billy is still reeling over Steve’s, ‘You don’t have to stop,’ so he nods his head, not trusting his voice.

Steve draws in a deep breath to steel himself. Billy recognizes the motion well. Their hands are still tightly clasped under the water. Steve wants to be friends. Won’t let him go.

“I may or may not have the world’s biggest crush on you.” Another glance, another second of their eyes meeting. “I have for a while.”

Steve takes Billy’s stunned silence as permission to expound on that revelation. Which works out for Billy, because he couldn’t hope to get his voice to cooperate right now.

“I felt something for you when I first saw you, but I was afraid of it. Cuz when Tommy first saw you, he called you a… Well, he said you were probably a… Well, the word he used isn’t a good one, and I won’t repeat it. But he thought you were gay and said we should make sure you knew your place in ‘our’ school.” Steve’s cheeks are still pink when he rolls his eyes. “So I went along with it, and I still feel bad about it, that I was a shithead to you all because I couldn’t deal with how I felt about you. My dad thinks the same way as Tommy, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you and how I treated you. So that’s why I apologized last year. Cuz I was wrong and I… well, I still like you.”

The last part comes out shy and small. Like Steve thinks Billy will yell at him or rip their hands apart. Their hands are motionless in the water. Neither makes a move to let go.

From far away, Billy murmurs, “I remember my first crush on a boy.”

From just as far away, Steve asks back, “Yea?”

Their eyes meet, so timid, and Billy shows him mercy by looking away first. Letting Steve look at him, if he wants.

“His name was Gene, we were in seventh grade together. I never told him…” A humorless bubble of laughter shakes his shoulders once, twice. “That was all going on while I still lived in California. Funny to think I was living my life as a seventh grader while behind the scenes all this crazy shit was happening to me.” Billy picks his head up again to meet Steve’s eyes staring at him so wide and hurt. “I never saw him again after the last day of school. That’s when everything fell apart and my mom found us. I haven’t thought about him in a long time, I guess. What could have been, you know?”

“I’m sorry, Billy.”

Billy just shrugs. He’s long over all that kid stuff.

“Shit happens. Can’t do anything about it now. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Steve nods, has to swallow a few times to get out, “So, uh, so you still like guys or…?”

“You might say I like them exclusively.”

That coaxes a snort out of Steve. It’s so easy to make him laugh and smile. And Billy smiles in kind, can’t help it when Steve is so soft and real like this. No bullshit, no popularity contests at school. Just Steve.

White teeth rake over Steve’s bottom lip again as he considers something. He glances all over Billy’s face, up down and all around. Mulling something over. Below and only known to them, Steve hand slips around his. But not to pull away. Long fingers brush between his, pausing before they lace together for true. Giving Billy the chance to say no, to deny Steve this. When Billy’s hand remains relaxed, Steve goes right on and clasps them together palm to palm. They’re even closer now. Nervous as they look at each other.

“Would it be weird if I kissed you right now? It would be weird, right?”

Billy says nothing. Just tips his chin up, cocks his head just so. It’s familiar to him. But he doesn’t dwell on that familiarity. It’s just him and Steve here. They’re just boys poking the edges of this thing between them. It’s innocent. 

Steve copies him in the other direction. Maybe it’s familiar to him, too, just for a different reason. His eyes are still a little wide, a little shocked even as he eats up some of the space between them.

He pauses with Billy’s eyes almost falling shut, whispers, “Billy you gotta stop me if this isn’t okay.”

But he doesn’t stop Steve. The angle is just right for their noses to not smash together. Although the tip of Steve’s long, straight nose does squish a bit into Billy’s cheek when their lips meet. Without hesitating, Steve’s free hand rises from the water and holds Billy just under the hinge of his jaw. Oh yes, Steve is familiar with this. Had probably practiced on girls being uncoordinated and sloppy with him while he thought about Billy instead. Billy is not some timid girl. Steve is the one to kiss him first, sending Billy’s foolish heart soaring. But Billy knows things, too, and they come back to him as easy as breathing.

Steve hums and then whines a little when Billy takes the initiative. He expects a fight, expects Steve to bluster and squirm away at having someone lick him open and deepen the kiss into his mouth. Steve is full of surprises, though, and plays back without hesitation. Billy hums too at that, and they’re quickly parting only to dive back together. Almost a year of pent up attraction and frustration pouring back and forth between their mouths as they try to kiss deeper, more, harder. The water makes it difficult, upsets their balance. Billy slips a hand between them to nudge Steve away by his chest. But not to deny him.

Untangling them, Billy turns to the lip of the pool and hauls himself out. Hopefully his swim trunks flatter him and the erection he’s trying to hide. Steve is hot on his heels, though. Another surprise as Steve pulls Billy back into their kisses and… lowers them until Steve is flat on his back. Billy rolls with the punches and plastered himself on top of Steve. It’s that or rub his knees raw on the concrete lip. No thanks to that when Steve’s hands paw at his upper back and drag him down. Steve wants him here. His noises turn high and fluttery when he catches his breath between kisses. Billy cages Steve’s head with his forearms, resting some of his weight on them to prop his chest up. So he’s not crushing Steve. It’s still a lot, though, with their hips grinding together. It’s so much better than sneaking his hands into his briefs and thinking about Steve instead. He’s here and real and warm under him, so loud as they kiss, and Billy can’t get enough. Breathing through all of this is a trick, though, and he pulls back to pant with Steve. He’s so beautiful with his loopy smile, how his eyes blink so slowly.

Steve looks up at him with awe brightening his eyes. He slips a hand free from Billy’s back and pets his hair, pushing it behind one of Billy’s ears. The sun is to Billy’s backs and filters through the trees. It’s still warm on the golden planes of him, feels amazing with the rest of his skin alive. Because of Steve. Done playing with Billy’s hair, but not done taking him in, Steve cups the firm line of Billy’s jaw and just watches him. They’re calmer, now. They shouldn’t jump into things. They’d just… needed to work some of their eagerness out before it boiled over. They’re teenagers.

Shuddering under Billy, Steve collects his voice enough to whisper, “Wow… Billy, I… You look like an angel right now.”

Ah, his chest hurts. Why does it hurt? Right in the center where his heart is. His heartbeat had risen thanks to them making-out, only now it races out of control. Running and hiding seem like good ideas, but why? He’s just here with Steve. Still, Billy sits up all the same and ignores the scratch of his knees on the concrete. He has to sit up, has to look around. It’s not dark yet, not close, but every shadow moves on its own. The treeline on the other side of the yard is worst of all. The darkest. He stares at it while twisted on his knees and doesn’t hear Steve, doesn’t feel his own nails digging into his palms until it stings. His fingers are ice cold.

“Billy? Hey, what’s wrong?”

Jumping and scrambling to get away, Billy almost lands a kick to Steve’s crotch. It’s a wild, panicked thing. He doesn’t mean to. He just needs to get away. Thankfully for Steve’s junk, the lip of the pool is closer than Billy thinks. Billy tumbles over the edge and sinks to the bottom of the pool without a gasp or scream. Being underwater makes the panic that much worse as up becomes down in his struggles. It takes Steve jumping in after him, dodging kicking feet and balled fists, to haul Billy back out of the pool. It winds both boys, having gone from syrupy pleasure to this muck. They lie panting side by side almost in their initial spots, staring up at the gradient sky above them. It turns orange and pink in the west.

Gathering himself first, Steve mumbles flat on his back and soaked, “So that was a thing…” He turns his head to the side, but Billy just keeps staring straight up. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to freak you out, I-I should have stopped or something. I’m sorry, Billy.”

Staring out of focus, Billy doesn’t mean to hear Neil singing in his head. The song he used to sing to put Billy to sleep as a baby. And then of course every time Neil would call him ‘angel’ echoes in his head. He wants to throw up. How could Steve make him remember all that just by saying that? Billy’s hands shake like leaves in the wind when he reaches up to cover his face. He won’t cry, he just… he needs a second. He hasn’t thought about all this in so long, doesn’t think about it all the time like he used to. He’s just a teenager in high school sometimes. With a friend who he has a massive crush on, who likes him back. They were making out just now. The first time in Billy’s life that it felt good. So why this…

Billy jumps when long fingers graze one of his wrists. Beyond them, Steve flinches back too.

“Billy, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Whatever I did, I won’t do it again, please will you just? Will you look at me? Say something, Billy, Jesus Christ…”

Steve’s touch at his wrist again has Billy’s hands flopping useless and weak back to the ground. The concrete is solid and slightly warm under him from the heat of the day. It scratches him. But it’s better than feeling nothing and yet everything all at once. He’s still a little out of breath when he blinks through stinging tears and sees the sky. And then Steve bent over him, eyes just as wet.

“Shit man, I’m sorry,” he says again. He reaches for Billy’s face, always gentle, and holds his cheek when the first tear spills over. “No, no, please don’t cry, fuck…”

“My dad used to call me that,” Billy says once he gets his voice to work, once he breathes calmly enough to speak. His voice is rough and dragged over glass. Like he’s been screaming. “That was his nickname for me. Angel.”

Like earlier, Steve’s mouth goes flapping as he searches for something to say. What is there to say, though? Steve couldn’t have known, hadn’t done this on purpose. It was an accident.

Billy huffs through a humorless laugh and drawls, “You know what’s funny about all that shit? I can’t remember his face. When I close my eyes and try to think about what my dad looked like? I can’t remember. He just doesn’t have a face when I think about him. Weird, right?”

Steve shakes his head like he doesn’t understand. He flinches closer, maybe to comfort Billy, but Billy beats him to it. He sits up in a smooth motion with a groan. Flailing at the bottom of a pool without air can wear a guy out, apparently. They don’t spring apart, though. Steve huddles as close as he can without touching Billy. He reads it in Billy’s skin, somehow, not to touch him. Billy isn’t sure if he’s grateful or hurt that he’s ruined the thing between them. Making out had been fun, more fun than he thought it would be. That’s what it’s like to be a teenager. A normal one. He held it for a moment.

“It’s not your fault, Steve. You didn’t do anything to me, I just remembered a bunch of stuff when you called me that, you didn’t do it on purpose.” Billy offers him a shrug and a careful hand on one of Steve’s stooped, defeated shoulders. “I liked what we were doing up to that point…”

Still upset with himself, Steve nods but says nothing. He swallows and glances down to Billy’s square hand on his shoulder. Billy’s hands are big enough to wrap completely around the joint. Steve’s too, he’s not a little boy either. They’re puppies kicking around this town with paws too big for their bodies. Growing into men. A soft smile ticks on Steve’s lips, and he grabs that paw of a hand and just holds it between both of his. To think a few minutes ago they’d bobbed around in the pool while Steve laced their fingers together and whispered his confession. That he likes Billy. Does he still after all this?

“I’m still sorry that it happened,” Steve says quietly. “I feel like I fucked up a good thing. Kinda what I always do, I think.” His thumb bumps across the bones in the back of Billy’s hand. Always touching, always reaching to hold some part of Billy close to him. Sighing, Steve adds, “I liked kissing you, too. Sorry if it’s weird now…”

Billy leans into his space, both their heads bowed to watch their hands, and says, “You didn’t fuck it up. It just happened… I’m messed up, Steve. That’s what you have to keep in mind.” They glance up at the same time. “There’s a lot of stuff going on in my head. I don’t think about what happened all the time, but it doesn’t go away. It’s not gonna be easy to be friends with me or… more.”

“Do you wanna be more with me?”

No one has ever asked him that. But Steve sounds so hopeful, and Billy likes him so much.

“I don’t know if I can,” he admits. Because it’s true. He doesn’t know if he’s capable of all that love shit. He wants to be. His hand tightens around Steve’s again. “I want to, but I—Steve, I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t, we can… I mean we can do whatever, we don’t gotta put a label on it.” Steve meets his eyes and bites his lip. Billy hopes Steve doesn’t try to kiss him, because he can’t right now. Instead, Steve just leans forward and rests their foreheads together. “I just… I like you a lot. And I don’t wanna hurt you, either. Will you think about it? While you're away? Will you think about me?”

He thinks about Steve whether he wants to or not. Steve will probably be the one thing that gets him through this trial shit. However long he has to stay in California until he’s dismissed from the witness stand. If only he could stay until Mom’s release. That’s what he’s hedging all his bets on—her innocence and the jury understanding that innocence. He wants to be there when she’s released so he can hug her and tell her he’s sorry for everything. Maybe they can be a family again… Maybe they can come back to Hawkins and…

Smiling through the sorrow, Billy admits, “I don’t think I could stop thinking about you if I tried. I’m stuck with you, remember?”

Steve probably wants to hug him. Definitely wants to kiss him. Billy reads the atmosphere loud and clear. Steve holds it all in, though, and just squeezes Billy’s hand instead.

“I’ll be thinking about you, too. And, like, no matter what you decide, please can we still be friends? Please?”

Steve picks his head up, separating them, and Billy meets his eyes no problem. Never backing down from a challenge. And for once, Steve doesn’t hunch in on himself when he holds Billy’s gaze. Maybe the hollowness behind Billy’s eyes isn’t that bad. Steve smiles at him like he’s the world.

Huffing and then smirking lightly, Billy says, “What did I just say about being stuck with you? Don’t worry so much, we’re gonna be friends no matter what. My story about my dad bad touching me didn’t chase you away, so I don’t think one messy make-out is gonna chase me away.” Billy pauses, considers that he shouldn’t say this. But fuck it. They’re about to spend some time apart. It’ll give both of them more to mull over. “I’ve liked you for a while, too, you know. I knew you were a brat, but I still thought you were pretty when I first saw you. So keep that in mind while I’m gone.”

“Okay.” Steve’s smile is almost shy. Would be shy on anyone else. On Steve, it’s just him holding back. Trying to give Billy metaphorical space. “I’m gonna miss you while you’re gone. Do you know how long you’ll be in California?”

He doesn’t. And depending on what happens? Maybe Billy wouldn’t have to come back. But he’ll insist on it, if Mom is released immediately somehow and she takes him back. He’ll insist on coming back to Hawkins. If only to hold Steve and kiss him and promise that it’s not over, that they can work something out, they can be together… if they want. If they want to try. Nevermind Billy’s uncertainty over his ability to love. The jury is still out on that. But he wants Steve so fiercely, more than he’s ever wanted someone. 

“I don’t know, but maybe I can call you or something while I’m there. So you know what’s going on.”

“You’d do that?”

Billy isn’t sure he’ll ever get over how Steve looks at him. So happy and perked up despite the heavy conversation. Despite the possibility of nothing coming of all this. That Billy may not come back to stay. He can’t say it, can’t ruin Steve’s glow. But they feel the thread between them stretched thin. Hopefully it doesn’t break when Billy flies home.

“As long as your parents don’t mind the long-distance charge.”

Again Steve reels in his happiness. His grin isn’t as big as it could be. And when he reaches for Billy’s shoulders to hug him, he does so slowly. So Billy can stop him if he wants. Always giving Billy the choice. So Billy takes that choice and opens his arms to Steve’s waist, pulls him close before Steve gets a chance. Steve’s belly huffs in a laugh against his, more as Steve muffles laughter in Billy’s hair. It would be better if they weren’t stiff and stinking of chlorine. Billy is already looking forward to a shower when he can peel himself away from Steve. As the days go on, it'll be harder and harder to do so. Because he finally has a nice thing in his life, and he won’t want to let it go. It will all work out. Somehow. They’ll make it work. Billy wants this enough, is tired of accepting the hand he’s been dealt. He has a choice now, and he wants to choose Steve. No matter what happens, he’s choosing Steve.


End file.
